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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Bad Day at Black Rock Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK Written by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman Based on the story "Bad Day At Hondo" by Howard Breslin SHOOTING DRAFT FADE IN BEFORE MAIN TITLE BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK ESTABLISHING SHOT - BLACK ROCK - PART OF TOWN: FOCAL POINT: RAILROAD STATION abandoned, in an extreme state of dilapidation. The structure is blistered by the resolute sun, the roof is weather-warped. Dry rot and mildew wage a relentless battle against the foundation. Between the building and the tracks is a long, somewhat narrow platform, its floorboards twisted by time, termites and the elements. The match-board overhang of the building, throwing some little shade to a portion of the platform, sags and bellies. From the overhang is appended a rectangular panel on which, in flaky paint, the town is identified: BLACK ROCK One of the broken wires holding the panel is longer than the other, cocking the sign irregularly. The railroad tracks reach endlessly into the horizon. Past the town on each side stretches the ocean-like prairie, with sand dunes rising and falling monotonously, shouldering each other toward infinity. The morning sun lays over this wasteland of the American Southwest, a gigantic yellow bruise from which heat waves like bloodshot arteries spread themselves over the poisoned sky. A small shack stands next to the station, separated from it by a narrow alleyway and leaning toward the larger building, as if for support. The words POSTAL TELEGRAPH are arced across its dusty vitrine. An old straight-backed chair, reinforced with twisted wire, is tilted against the north-west corner of the shack. In it is Mr. Hastings, the postal telegraph agent, a man of middle years and exorbitant mediocrity. He sits there spinelessly, fingering a wart on his receding chin and, once in a while, for variety, rubbing a knuckle under his watery nose. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK The town is minute, dismal and forgotten, crouching in isolation where the single line of railroad track intersects a secondary dirt road. The twin strips of steel glisten in the fierce sunlight, fencing the dreary plain from the false fronts of the town. In b.g. is the bluff of a black stony mountain. Against this ancient mass the houses of Black Rock's single street*** (See map, P.2A) are scanty in number and insignificant in architecture, a conglomerate paint-peeled modern trussed together with rusty nails and battered tin strips torn from signs. The town and the terrain surrounding it have, if nothing else, the quality of inertia and immutibility -- nothing moves, not even an insect; nothing breathes, not even the wind. Town and terrain seem to be trapped, caught and held forever in the sullen, abrasive earth. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER jarring in its power as it ramrods across the desert, its diesel engines pounding. Its horn "WONKS" twice, blasting the shatterable air. FULL SHOT - BLACK ROCK - ANOTHER ANGLE Nothing is changed, nothing is altered. But look close and you will see a small shallow current of wind sweeping lazily across the dirt and dust of the single street. HOLD for a beat, then MAIN TITLE appears. Between the ensuing credits INTERCUT a series of sharp LONG SHOTS. The composition of each shot has that hard, sun-beaten texture of American primitive painting -- pressurized in its simplicity -- best exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Grant Wood. EXT. SAM'S SANITARY BAR AND GRILL - ANGLE ON DOC VELIE assayer and notary public, mortician to the citizens of Black Rock who have departed to a better place, and veterinarian to its lesser animals. An elderly, somewhat untidy gentleman, he sits nonchalantly on a chair outside the Bar & Grill. Idling with him are three or four other loafers, among them Sam, the middle-aged proprietor of the restaurant. Doc glances casually at his watch; no one else moves. The hot wind continues listlessly down the empty street. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. GARAGE - LIZ BROOKS A tall, attractive girl of twenty in dungarees and cotton shirt. She stands just outside the open barn-like door of the garage, staring, from the compulsive force of habit, at the endlessly receding tracks. The sultry wind, its gustiness slightly increased, blows through her fine dark hair. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. PORCH OF HOTEL - COLEY TRIMBLE AND HECTOR DAVID two enormous men. HECTOR is tall, and there is about him a nasty, raw-boned tautness; COLEY is more the anthropoid type -- long thick arms and a round, iron casing of a belly. They glance down the street, watching incuriously a dust devil swirling in the wind. Now the CAMERA has completed its probe of the town and its denizens. MAIN TITLE and CREDITS are completed... CLOSE SHOT - MR. HASTINGS still spineless in his chair, the chair still tilted against the shack. From o.s. and far away, we hear the horn of the streamliner -- two long "WONKS", a short and a long (engine whistle signal for approach to bridge crossing). Hastings straightens up ever so slightly as he reacts to the oncoming train. STRAIGHT SHOT - STREAMLINER moving at tremendous speed. BRIDGE with train barrelling toward it. The horn BLASTS -- three short WONKS (engine whistle signal for stopping at next station). CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS getting jerkily to his feet, as though charged by a galvanic current. The uncharacteristic speed of his movements throws the tilted chair to the station platform. He raises an arm to shield his watery eyes from the sun... HASTINGS (almost inaudible, as if to himself) Stopping...? SHOT - TRAIN heading toward CAMERA, churning across the desert like a juggernaut. It PANS past CAMERA in a blur of speed. CAMERA SWINGS UP on a level with the great iron wheels as the brakes are applied. The wheels shriek agonizingly against the rails, kicking up cinders and a wild flurry of dust. She cuts speed, brakes hissing, and starts to slow down. LONG SHOT MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING from rear of town, toward the railroad tracks. The townspeople step out, frowning, cautious, disturbed. The secure ritual of the train passing through, never stopping, has somehow, for some unknown reason, been violated. CLOSE SHOT - DOC VELIE as his mouth tightens. His air of placidity vanishes, leaving his features disturbed. CLOSE SHOT - LIZ BROOKS Her fine young face stiffens almost imperceptibly. Her eyes are coated with a vague emptiness. She seems confused as she halfturns toward the hotel. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT SHE SEES Coley Trimble and Hector David, standing on the porch of the hotel. They seem tense, responding variously to what might be fear. Coley's nostrils flare, his flat ugly mouth compresses. He looks profoundly serious. Hector wipes a glob of dusty sweat from the socket of an eye and blinks rapidly. CLOSE SHOT - HASTINGS as he stands in surprise, nervously alert, watching the train as it comes to a complete stop. His jaw droops with the slackness of fear. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. EXT. STATION PLATFORM with the train stationary before it. A sleek steel door of a pullman clangs open. A colored porter carrying a suitcase walks down the wrought-iron steps. He is stately, gray-haired and lean, with the almost finical tidiness travelers associate with trainmen. The man behind him is big-shouldered, a granite- like wedge of a man with calm, piercing eyes. There is about him an air of monumental dependability and quiet humor, but his eyes are those of a man who has lately lived in somber familiarity with pain. His left arm hangs from his shoulder with that lifeless rigidity of paralysis, while the hand is hidden in his pocket. ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY AND PORTER The porter puts the suitcase on the platform. In the distance the town and its people are seen staring silently, motionlessly. The big man glances toward them. He smiles a sad, distasteful greeting to the town, its wretched dust. its mean, modest buildings. The porter disappears into the train as the conductor enters scene. He turns slowly, following Macreedy's gaze... CONDUCTOR (softly, staring at the towns people) Man. They look woebegone and far away. MACREEDY (looking around) I'll only be here twenty-four hours. CONDUCTOR In a place like this, it could be a lifetime. (turning to face Macreedy) Good luck, Mr. Macreedy. Macreedy nods his thanks. The conductor signals the engineer (o.s.) and steps on the train. The diesel's claxon blasts the torrid air ominously. The train slowly, smoothly, begins to move, picking up speed. The cars slip past until, quite suddenly, the Streamliner is gone. For a moment Macreedy watches it. Then, quite unconsciously, he takes a package of cigarettes from his left hand pocket, taps the last one free of the pack, sticks it between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, drops it beside the tracks. He takes a cardboard book of matches, flicks it open, bends a match in half with agile fingers, and with a sure frictional motion scrapes the head against the sandpaper guard. The match flares, the cigarette is lit. Macreedy inhales, exhales deeply, and turns to pick up his suitcase. Then he sees Hastings, who walks slowly, almost painfully, to him. His Adam's apple grapples protestingly with his collar. After a moment he controls it sufficiently to talk... HASTINGS You for Black Rock? MACREEDY (easily) That's right. HASTINGS (uneasily) There must be some mistake. I'm Hastings, the telegraph agent. Nobody told me the train was stopping. MACREEDY (with a ghost of a grin) They didn't? HASTINGS (upset) I just said they didn't, and they ought to. What I -- want to know, why didn't they? MACREEDY (shrugging) Probably didn't think it was important. HASTINGS Important?! It's the first time the streamliner stopped here in four years. (swallowing nervously) You being met? You visiting folks or something? I mean, whatd'ya want? MACREEDY I want to go to Adobe Flat. Any cabs available? HASTINGS (as if he hadn't heard right; as if he wanted everyone in town to know) Adobe Flat?! (he gulps, recovers slightly) No cabs. MACREEDY Where's the hotel? Hastings looks at him blankly. The thousand-yard stare of a hypnotic glazes his features. MACREEDY (patiently) I asked where's the hotel? Hastings points. MACREEDY Thanks. With his suitcase, he cuts across a weedy path, running into Black Rock's single street. For a moment, Hastings stares after him; then he breaks hurriedly, entering telegraph agent's shack. INT. POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE as Hastings, fumbling, picks up the phone... HASTINGS (into mouthpiece) Hello, Pete? Now, listen... REVERSE SHOT - MAIN STREET - BLACK ROCK SHOOTING down the street as Macreedy slowly walks toward the hotel. Not a person has moved, each eye is glued on the stranger. The hollow rasp of Macreedy's tread on the wooden platform of the "pavement" seems shatteringly loud in the enveloping silence... CLOSE SHOT - LIZ as she follows the man's movement. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. CLOSE ANGLE - ON MACREEDY as he walks along. He feels the eyes of everyone following him, glaring at him. He halts, looks around. The townspeople continue to eye him brazenly, yet with an almost animal incuriosity. He grins and walks on past a cluster of five or six RFD mail boxes and a road sign [1], its paint peeling, its face punctured by three or four bullets from a drunk's pistol long ago. SHOT - MACREEDY heading toward the hotel. In b.g. is a relatively small farm equipment yard compressed between a general store (which Macreedy has just passed) and the hotel just ahead. In the yard are a few tractors, and among them huddles a tiny office. It is empty; the front window is thick with dust. On it, etched by an anonymous, childish finger, is a skull and crossbones. Running diagonally across is the printed legend: T.J. HATES J.S. Macreedy notes the inscription with a sort of wry bemusement. He walks on, reaching the facade of the weather-beaten hotel. A gust of wind swirls down the street, momentarily engulfing Macreedy and the entire area in a sudden eddying whirlpool. As it subsides... ANOTHER ANGLE - MACREEDY As he peers through the dust toward the dingy hotel. It has a narrow stoop and outsize bay windows on each side. Macreedy mounts the hotel steps. At the top of the steps Coley Trimble and Hector David watch him silently. Hector is large and leanly muscular, yet Coley looms over him like a battleship. He is a gross behemoth of a man, with sharp flinty eyes the size of glistening pinpoints and a slack, oversized jaw. Both men wear modern Western work clothes, but there is one incongruous accessory which Hector affects. Around his thick wrist is a watch with a large flat face and an elaborately tooled leather strap -- a cheap reproduction of one of those expensive Swiss timepieces which, among many distinguished accomplishments, tells the day of the week, the month of the year, the phase of the moon, etc., etc. MACREEDY (slowing up) 'Afternoon. No reaction from Hector. COLEY (blocking doorway) Anything I can do for you? MACREEDY You run this hotel? COLEY No. MACREEDY (pleasantly) Then there's nothing you can do for me. He brushes past Coley and enters. HECTOR (turning to Coley) Find Smith! Coley nods and heads down the street. Hector enters the hotel. OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL It is a typical small town hotel, but crummier, with a tiny lobby. Macreedy is waiting at the empty desk as Hector strolls in, flopping his enormous bulk into a nicked and mothy chair. He picks up a newspaper, but his eyes remain on Macreedy. Macreedy waits patiently for the absent clerk. For a moment, he studies the open registration ledger; his eyes rove from the ink-splotched blotter up over the desk to one of those World War II banners, the imitation silk now stained and faded. It depicts a shrieking eagle rampant, clutching The Flag in a claw. Under it, the legend: "GOD BLESS AMERICA" Near it, a tacky placard proclaims: DO ALL THE GOOD YOU CAN, BY ALL THE MEANS YOU CAN, IN ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN, AT ALL THE TIMES YOU CAN, TO ALL THE PEOPLE YOU CAN, AS LONG AS EVER YOU CAN. Feeling the eyes of Hector on him, Macreedy turns. Hector meets his gaze with bland, insolent interest. Now a young man (his name is PETE) comes out of a small room behind the registration desk and walks up to it. There is a softness about his regular features, a certain indefinable sugariness about his mouth. He seems tight-lipped, for lorn and uneasy as he faces Macreedy across the counter. MACREEDY (pleasantly) I'd like a room. PETE All filled up. MACREEDY (a beat) Got any idea where I might -- PETE (stiffly, shaking his head) This is 1945, mister. There's been a war on. Macreedy looks at the young man with impeccable tolerance. Without shifting his gaze, he slowly lets fall his small suitcase. It thuds softly on the frayed carpet. MACREEDY I thought it ended a couple of months ago. PETE Yeah, but the O.P.A. lingers on. Macreedy looks down at the open ledger on the desk before him. The clerk reaches out to close it. Gently, yet firmly, Macreedy stops him, reopening the big book. He studies it, a finger straying unconsciously inside his collar. He [...] on it to relieve the starchy stiffness. Pete begins to fidget... PETE You don't know about the O.P.A... MACREEDY (without looking up) Tell me. PETE Well, for establishments with less'n fifty rooms hotel keepers got to report regularly about... His voice fades desperately. PETE ...about tenants and... and... registration... (drawing himself up) There are penalties imposed... Again his voice trails off. MACREEDY (eyes still on the ledger) You seem to have lots of vacancies. PETE (uncomfortable) Well... as I said... Macreedy leans over the counter to a rack of keys. He runs his splayed fingers over the key rack as... MACREEDY Lots of vacancies. PETE They're everyone of 'em locked up. Some are show rooms... MACREEDY Yes...? PETE (with touching sincerity) ...for cattle buyers, feed salesmen. The others -- they're spoken for, rented to cowboys, ranch hands... (Macreedy listens respectfully) They pay by the month. For when they come into town. We provide for their every wish and comfort. (weakly) You understand...? MACREEDY Not really. But while I'm pondering it, get a room ready. Just for tonight. (picking key from rack at random) This one. Pete opens his mouth but no sound comes out. [...] at Hector. CLOSE SHOT - HECTOR glowering at Pete. TWO SHOT - MACREEDY AND PETE as Macreedy signs the ledger. MACREEDY (signing) Sure could use a bath. Where is it? He picks up the key. PETE Head of the stairs. Macreedy nods, reaches for the bag at his feet. Then he hesitates, looks at Hector. MACREEDY I don't know just why you're interested -- but the name's Macreedy. I'm... (grins) It's all in the ledger. HECTOR (slowly, his eyes glued to Macreedy's stiff arm) You look like you need a hand. Macreedy says nothing. The wales along his face harden. He picks up his bag and climbs the stairs. As he disappears, Hector lumbers to the desk and grabs the ledger. HECTOR (reading aloud) John J. Macreedy. From Los Angeles. (looking up) I wanna know everything he does, Pete. Check every call -- any mail. PETE (nodding) And in the meantime...? HECTOR (grinning harshly) In the meantime, I'll crowd him a little... (looking up the stairs) ...see if he's got any iron in his blood... As Pete bites his lower lip thoughtfully, DISSOLVE: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. BATHROOM - DAY - MACREEDY in a new bathrobe, before a cracked, discolored mirror. He draws a safety razor down his face, completing his shave; then he wipes a hand over the mirror, which clouds with steam almost as fast as he can clear it. o.s., the SOUND of bath water gurgling down the tub drain. He runs a tentative finger inside the collar of his robe, pulling loose a price tag. He drops it carefully into a wastebasket. He turns on the faucet at the sink to rinse his shaving brush. The rusty pipes cough and rumble, roaring as a trickle of water arrives while the drain sucks loudly at its departure. He dries the razor, turns off the faucet and exits. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - ANGLE ON MACREEDY As he walks down the dark, narrow hall. He wears the bathrobe and slippers; a large towel is draped over his head, like a prize fighter. He stops outside a door, pushes the towel from his head to his neck and puts his hand on the knob. He is about to insert the key when he tenses. Slowly, silently, he turns the knob and throws open the door. INT. HOTEL ROOM Next to the door, in the corner of the small, sparsely furnished room is Macreedy's suitcase, open, its contents askew and scattered over the dusty floor. On the bed sprawls Hector David, his gigantic body straining the springs. He lies on his back, hands clasped easily under his head, thick legs crossed, his Stetson tilted over his low forehead. He is completely unconcerned by Macreedy's entrance. For a moment Macreedy stares at him. Then... MACREEDY (slightly amused) I think you have the wrong room. HECTOR (not budging) You think so? Slowly, his eyes still on Macreedy, Hector takes off his elaborate wrist watch and slides it gently into his pants pocket. HECTOR What else you got on your mind? Macreedy pauses and takes in the situation. He refuses to be baited. MACREEDY Nothing, I guess. HECTOR If you had a mind, boy, you'd of heard what Pete downstairs said. He said these here rooms are for us cowboys. For our every wish and comfort. MACREEDY And this, I guess, is yours? HECTOR When I'm in town. And I'm in town, as any fool can see. You see that, don't you, boy? MACREEDY I guess I do. Would you mind very much if I sort of... (he gestures toward his suitcase and clothing) ...clean up this mess and get another room? HECTOR Not at all. But if you want this room real bad... (he raises his enormous bulk to a sitting position, rubbing the knuckles of one big fist with the palm of his other hand) ...we could maybe settle your claim without all this talk. (no answer from Macreedy) If a man don't claim what's rightfully his'n, he's nuthin'. What do you think? MACREEDY I guess so. HECTOR You guess so. But still you ain't claimin' this room? MACREEDY I guess not. HECTOR You're all the time guessin', boy. Don't you ever know anything? MACREEDY One thing I know. Since I got off the train, I've been needled. Why? HECTOR (after a beat, slowly) I guess I don't rightly know. For a moment their eyes lock. Then Macreedy goes to his suitcase and throws his clothes in it. As he goes out the door... DISSOLVE TO: OUT Sequence omitted from original script. INT. HOTEL LOBBY - DAY - FULL SHOT - SAM AND THE LOAFERS They sit around, each with his own thoughts. They are generally stolid; only Sam seems nervous. He looks up eagerly as Doc Velie enters the lobby. As he joins Sam... Sam walks light for a big man, Doc. DOC (straight) Who? SAM (irritated) You know who! (Doc grins impishly; Sam's anger subsides) What do you think, Doc? DOC Why ask me? He's no salesman, that's sure. (again the impish grin) Unless he's peddling dynamite. SAM (squirming visibly) Maybe he's a cop, or something... DOC Ever see a cop with a stiff arm? SAM (squinting thoughtfully) Maybe his arm's all right. Maybe he's just holding tight to something in his pocket... DOC (scoffing) Like what? A pistol? A stick of T-N- T? (gleefully) To blow up this whole mangy, miserable town! (with sudden, almost naive, seriousness) Why are you so interested, Sam? SAM Who, me? DOC I mean, if I was that interested... (his eyes look up toward the hotel stairs o.s.) ...I'd ask him. Sam follows Doc's gaze... REVERSE SHOT - WHAT THEY SEE 35X1 Macreedy walks down the stairs. Pete looks up from the desk. He is about to dart behind the partition when... MACREEDY Hey! Hold it! He walks to the desk, smiling at Pete. In b.g., Doc, Sam and the loafers watch. MACREEDY Got any cigarettes? Pete studies him, then bends under the counter, coming up with a pack. Doc leaves Sam and is slowly walking toward the stranger, eyeing him curiously. PETE This is all. Macreedy throws the money on the desk and opens the pack, dexterously using the fingers of his left hand. PETE How long you staying? MACREEDY In my new room, you mean? (flatly) I'm staying. PETE I mean, in the hotel. MACREEDY Just about twenty-four hours. (sharply) Why? PETE (flustered) I... I was just askin'. MACREEDY (evenly) Why? You expecting a convention? PETE (doggedly) I was just askin'. Macreedy looks at him, inhales deeply on his cigarette then, as he slowly lets the smoke out, removes the cigarette and looks at it. MACREEDY Stale. Now Doc is at the desk not far from Macreedy. Macreedy starts out, then turns to Pete. MACREEDY Where can I rent a car? PETE I don't know. Macreedy smiles and sighs tiredly. Then... MACREEDY (as to a child) Let's put it this way -- if I had a car and if I wanted to put gas in it, where would I go? PETE (refusing to cooperate) But you don't have a car. DOC (to Macreedy) You might try the garage at the end of the street. Macreedy pauses, looking at Doc, who blandly returns his stare. MACREEDY Thanks. Doc nods. Macreedy smiles and walks toward the door; Pete, Doc et al watching him. He goes out. EXT. STREET As Macreedy walks down hotel steps, a station wagon pulls up just before him. Tied with a rope to the right front fender is a magnificent eight-point buck. A stain of dry blood weaves an uneven course down his glossy flank from an unmistakable bullet hole in his shoulder. Two men get out of the car; one of them is Coley Trimble. He sees Macreedy coming toward him. He stands motionless in the center of the narrow pavement, picking at his nose with the detachment of a child. The other man is broad and excessively masculine as he swings out from behind the wheel. He walks around the car, joining Coley at the curb. Macreedy comes on. The man with Coley looks at the stranger with colossal indifference, as expressionless as the soil of Black Rock. His handsome face, under a dusty hunting cap, is taut and hard and wind-shaven. Next to Coley he stands motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from a black Cuban cigarette between his thin lips. In b.g., the loafers who had been ensconced in the hotel lobby move out the door and stand on the porch. They watch Macreedy, Coley and Reno Smith, the handsome, taut-faced man. Silence soems to settle over everything. It is Macreedy who breaks it... MACREEDY (grinning wearily at Coley) Here we go again. Gently he walks around Coley and Reno Smith and continues down the street. Coley's eyes follow him. Smith goes up the steps of the hotel and enters the lobby. Coley quickly follows him. The loafers on the porch go back inside. INT. HOTEL LOBBY The loafers resume their familiar places as Smith walks briskly to the clerk's desk. Pete, in anticipation, opens the hotel register, places it before Smith PETE (deferentially, gesturing toward the open register) That's all I know about him, Mr. Smith. Smith doesn't answer; he looks up thoughtfully. His eyes harden almost imperceptibly as he sees Coley, across the narrow room, looking out the window after Macreedy. SMITH (to Coley's back) Sit down. COLEY (spinning to face him) I was only... SMITH (interrupting) Sit down. Coley sits in the nearest chair. Beyond Smith, still resting easily against the high counter of Pete's desk, the gigantic figure of Hector appears at the top of the stairs. He comes down and joins Smith. HECTOR (after a pause) Pretty cool guy. SMITH Doesn't push easy? HECTOR (frowning) That's it -- that's just it. He pushes too easy. Maybe we oughtta... He hesitates as Doc Velie sidles amiably into earshot. SMITH What do you want, Doc? DOC Nothing. (archly) I was just wondering what all you people were worrying about. (Smith looks at him coldly) Not that I have the slightest idea. SMITH You wonder too much, and you talk too much. (pauses) It's a bad parlay, Doc. DOC I hold no truck with silence. (impishly) I got nothing to hide. HECTOR (suddenly towering over Doc) What're you tryin' to say? DOC Nothing, man. It's just, you worry about the stranger only if you look at him... (slowly) ...from a certain aspect. SMITH How do you look at him, Doc? DOC (firmly) With the innocence of a fresh-laid egg. SMITH (after a pause) Keep it up, Doc. Be funny. Make bad jokes. (he starts to walk toward the window, Doc and Hector following him) And some day I'll have Coley wash out your mouth with lye. Smith looks thoughtfully out the window. REVERSE SHOT - WHAT HE SEES Macreedy, down the end of the block, saunters easily up to Liz's garage. EXT. LIZ'S GARAGE - FULL SHOT The garage, without a door, opens on the street. Against the front of the building is parked a battered bicycle. On one of the barnlike walls a boy of nine is drawing laboriously with a piece of chalk. He puts the last flourish to a skull and crossbones identical with that seen earlier on the window of the equipment yard office. Macreedy stops a few feet from him, waiting until the boy prints "T.J.". As he steps back to admire his handiwork... MACREEDY Hi, T.J. T.J. nods. He approaches the wall, raising his chalk. MACREEDY This your garage? T.J. Nope. MACREEDY (a beat) Where's the man it belongs to? T.J. Ain't a man. He pauses. As Macreedy opens his mouth to interrogate further... T.J. Lady runs this garage. Again a pause. T.J. has just completed the final letter of the word "HATES". And again as Macreedy opens his mouth... T.J. She's not here. MACREEDY Where'd she go? T.J. (shrugging) I dunno. Somewhere. MACREEDY When will she be back? T.J. I dunno. Sometime. Again the pause. T.J. steps back, having completed his work, which, of course, broadcasts the fact that "T.J. HATES J.S.". And again as Macreedy begins to speak... T.J. In about ten minutes. MACREEDY (with a grin) Thanks. T.J. turns, pulls the bike away from the building, completes a fastidious "pony express" and peddles furiously out of scene. EXT. STREET - FULL SHOT as Macreedy, after a moment's

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

attitude

How many times the word 'attitude' appears in the text?

Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

theater

How many times the word 'theater' appears in the text?

Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

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Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

choir

How many times the word 'choir' appears in the text?

Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

rationalization

How many times the word 'rationalization' appears in the text?

Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

anymore

How many times the word 'anymore' appears in the text?

Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

na

How many times the word 'na' appears in the text?

Barton Fink Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS if (window!= top) top.location.href=location.href // --> BARTON FINK BARTON FINK Screenplay By Ethan Coen & Joel Coen FADE IN: ON BARTON FINK He is a bespectacled man in his thirties, hale but somewhat bookish. He stands, tuxedoed, in the wings of a theater, looking out at the stage, listening intently to end of a performance. In the shadows behind him an old stagehand leans against a flat, expressionlessly smoking a cigarette, one hand on a thick rope that hangs from the ceiling. The voices of the performing actors echo in from the offscreen stage: ACTOR I'm blowin' out of here, blowin' for good. I'm kissin' it all goodbye, these four stinkin' walls, the six flights up, the el that roars by at three A.M. like a castiron wind. Kiss 'em goodbye for me, Maury! I'll miss 'em like hell I will! ACTRESS Dreaming again! ACTOR Not this time, Lil! I'm awake now, awake for the first time in years. Uncle Dave said it: Daylight is a dream if you've lived with your eyes closed. Well my eyes are open now! I see that choir, and I know they're dressed in rags! But we're part of that choir, both of us yeah, and you, Maury, and Uncle Dave too! MAURY The sun's coming up, kid. They'll be hawking the fish down on Fulton Street. ACTOR Let 'em hawk. Let 'em sing their hearts out. MAURY That's it, kid. Take that ruined choir. Make it sing! ACTOR So long, Maury. MAURY So long. We hear a door open and close, then approaching footsteps. A tall, dark actor in a used tweed suit and carrying a beat-up valise passes in front of Barton: From offscreen stage: MAURY We'll hear from that kid. And I don't mean a postcard. The actor sets the valise down and then stands waiting int he shadows behind Barton. An older man in work clothes not wardrobe passes in front of Barton from the other direction, pauses at the edge of the stage and cups his hands to his mouth. OLDER MAN FISH! FRESH FISH! As the man walks back off the screen: LILY Let's spit on our hands and get to work. It's late, Maury. MAURY Not any more Lil... Barton mouths the last line in sync with the offscreen actor: MAURY ...It's early. With this the stagehand behind Barton furiously pulls the rope hand-over-hand and we hear thunderous applause and shouts of "Bravo!" As the stagehand finishes bringing the curtain down, somewhat muting the applause, the backstage actor trots out of frame toward the stage. The stagehand pulls on an adjacent rope, bringing the curtain back up and unmuting the applause. Barton Fink seems dazed. He has been joined by two other men, both dressed in tuxedos, both beaming toward the stage. BARTON'S POV Looking across a tenement set at the backs of the cast as the curtain rises on the enthusiastic house. The actors take their bows and the cry of "Author, Author" goes up from the crowd. The actors turn to smile at Barton in the wings. BARTON He hesitates, unable to take it all in. He is gently nudged toward the stage by the two tuxedoed gentlemen. As he exits toward the stage the applause is deafening. TRACKING SHOT Pushing a maitre 'd who looks back over his shoulder as he leads the way through the restaurant. MAITRE 'D Your table is ready, Monsieur Fink... several members of your party have already arrived... REVERSE Pulling Barton FINK Is Garland Stanford here? MAITRE 'D He called to say he'd be a few minutes late... Ah, here we are... TRACKING IN Toward a large semi-circular booth. Three guests, two me and a woman in evening wear, are rising and beaming at Barton. A fat middle-aged man, one of the tuxedoed gentlemen we saw backstage, is moving out to let Barton slide in. MAN Barton, Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire... Barton nods and looks at the woman. MAN ...and Poppy Carnahan. We're drinking champagne, dear boy, in honor of the occasion. Have you seen the Herald? Barton looks sullenly at his champagne glass as the fat man fills it. BARTON Not yet. MAN Well, I don't want to embarrass you but Caven could hardly contain himself. But more important, Richard and Poppy here loved the play. POPPY Loved it! What power! RICHARD Yeah, it was a corker. BARTON Thanks, Richard, but I know for a fact the only fish you've ever seen were tacked to a the wall of the yacht club. RICHARD Ouch! MAN Bravo! Nevertheless, we were all devastated. POPPY Weeping! Copius tears! What did the Herald say? MAN I happen to have it with me. BARTON Please Derek POPPY Do read it, do! DEREK "Bare Ruined Choirs: Triumph of the Common Man. The star of the Bare Ruined Choirs was not seen on the stage of the Belasco last night though the thespians involved all acquitted themselves admirably. The find of the evening was the author of this drama about simple folk fish mongers, in fact whose brute struggle for existence cannot quite quell their longing for something higher. The playwright finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most callused speech. A tough new voice in the American theater has arrived, and the owner of that voice is named... Barton Fink." BARTON They'll be wrapping fish in it in the morning so I guess it's not a total waste. POPPY Cynic! DEREK Well we can enjoy your success, Barton, even if you can't. BARTON Don't get me wrong I'm glad it'll do well for you, Derek. DEREK Don't worry about me, dear boy I want you to celebrate. BARTON All right, but I can't start listening to the critics, and I can't kid myself about my own work. A writer writes from his gut, and his gut tells him what's good and what's... merely adequate. POPPY Well I don't pretend to be a critic, but Lord, I have a gut, and it tells me it was simply marvelous. RICHARD And a charming gut it is. POPPY You dog! RICHARD (baying) Aaa-woooooooo! Barton turns to look for the source of an insistent jingling. We swish pan off him to find a busboy marching through the restaurant displaying a page sign, bell attached, with Barton's name on it. TRACKING IN TOWARD A BAR A distinguished fifty-year-old gentleman in evening clothes is nursing a martini, watching Barton approach. PULLING BARTON As he draws near. BARTON I thought you were going to join us. Jesus, Garland, you left me alone with those people. GARLAND Don't panic, I'll join you in a minute. What's you think of Richard and Poppy? Barton scowls BARTON The play was marvelous. She wept, copiously. Millions of dollars and no sense. Garland smiles, then draws Barton close. GARLAND We have to talk a little business. I've just been on the phone to Los Angeles. Barton, Capitol Pictures wants to put you under contract. They've offered you a thousand dollars a week. I think I can get them to go as high as two. BARTON To do what? GARLAND What do you do far a living? BARTON I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try to make a difference. GARLAND Fair enough. No pressure here, Barton, because I respect you, but let me point out a couple of things. One, here you make a difference to five hundred fifty people a night if the show sells out. Eighty five million people go to the pictures every week. BARTON To see pap. GARLAND Yes, generally, to see pap. However, point number two: A brief tenure in Hollywood could support you through the writing of any number of plays. BARTON I don't know, Garland; my place is here right now. I feel I'm on the brink of success- GARLAND I'd say you're already enjoying some. Barton leans earnestly forward. BARTON No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers like Derek make a lot of money. No, a real success the success we've been dreaming about the creation of a new, living theater of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man. He leans back and chuckles ruefully. BARTON ...I guess I'm sprouting off again. But I am certain of this, Garland: I'm capable of more good work. Maybe better work than I did in Choirs. It just doesn't seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead the life of mind. GARLAND Okay Barton, you're the artist, I'm just the ten percenter. You decide what you want and I'll make it happen. I'm only asking that your decision be informed by a little realism if I can use that word and Hollywood in the same breath. Barton glumly lights a cigarette and gazes out across the floor. Garland studies him. GARLAND ...Look, they love you, kid everybody does. You see Caven's review in the Herald? BARTON No, what did it say? GARLAND Take my copy. You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity to redeem that for a little cash strike that, a lot of cash. Garland looks at Barton for a reaction, but gets none. GARLAND ...The common man'll still be here when you get back. What the hell, they might even have one or two of 'em out in Hollywood. Absently: BARTON ...That's a rationalization, Garland. Garland smiles gently. GARLAND Barton, it was a joke. We hear a distant rumble. It builds slowly and we cut to: A GREAT WAVE Crushing against the Pacific shore. The roar of the surf slips away as we dissolve to: HOTEL LOBBY A high wide shot from the front door, looking down across wilting potted palms, brass cuspidors turning green, ratty wing chairs; the fading decor is deco-gone-to-seed. Amber light, afternoon turning to evening, slopes in from behind us, washing the derelict lobby with golden highlights. Barton Fink enters frame from beneath the camera and stops in the middle foreground to look across the lobby. We are framed on his back, his coat and hat. The lobby is empty. There is a suspended beat as Barton takes it in. Barton moves toward the front desk. THE REVERSE As Barton stops at the empty desk. He hits a small silver bell next to the register. Its ring-out goes on and on without losing volume. After a long beat there is a dull scuffle of shoes on stairs. Barton, puzzled, looks around the empty lobby, then down at the floor behind the front desk. A TRAP DOOR It swings open and a young man in a faded maroon uniform, holding a shoebrush and a shoe not one of his own climbs up from the basement. He closes the trap door, steps up to the desk and sticks his finger out to touch the small silver bell, finally muting it. The lobby is now silent again. CLERK Welcome to the Hotel Earle. May I help you, sir? BARTON I'm checking in. Barton Fink. The clerk flips through cards on the desk. CLERK F-I-N-K. Fink, Barton. That must be you, huh? BARTON Must be. CLERK Okay then, everything seems to be in order. Everything seems to be in order. He is turning to a register around for Barton to sign. CLERK ...Are you a tranz or a rez? BARTON Excuse me? CLERK Transient or resident? BARTON I don't know... I mean, I'll be here, uh, indefinitely. CLERK Rez. That'll be twenty-five fifty a week payable in advance. Checkout time is twelve sharp, only you can forget that on account you're a rez. If you need anything, anything at all, you dial zero on your personal in-room telephone and talk to me. My name is Chet. BARTON Well, I'm going to be working here, mostly at night; I'm a writer. Do you have room service? CLERK Kitchen closes at eight but I'm the night clerk. I can always ring out for sandwiches. The clerk is scribbling something on the back of an index card. CLERK ...Though we provide privacy for the residential guest, we are also a full service hotel including complimentary shoe shine. My name is Chet. He pushes a room key across the counter on top of the index card. Barton looks at the card. On it: "CHET!" Barton looks back up at the clerk. They regard each other for a beat. CLERK ...Okay BARTON Huh? The clerk. CLERK Okey-dokey, go ahead. BARTON What CLERK Don't you wanna go to your room?! Barton stares at him. BARTON ...What number is it? The clerk stares back. CLERK ...Six-oh-five. I forgot to tell you. As Barton stoops to pick up his two small bags: CLERK ...Those your only bags? BARTON The others are being sent. The clerk leans over the desk to call after him: CLERK I'll keep an eye out for them. I'll keep my eyes peeled, Mr. Fink. Barton is walking to the elevator. ELEVATOR Barton enters and sets down his bags. An aged man with white stubble, wearing a greasy maroon uniform, sits on a stool facing the call panel. He does not acknowledge Barton's presence. After a beat: BARTON ...Six, please. The elevator man gets slowly to his feet. As he pushes the door closed: ELEVATOR MAN Next stop: Six. SIXTH-FLOOR HALLWAY Barton walks slowly toward us, examining the numbers on the doors. The long, straight hallway is carpeted with an old stained forest green carpet. The wallpaper shows faded yellowing palm trees. Barton sticks his key in the lock of a door midway down the hall. HIS ROOM As Barton enters. The room is small and cheaply furnished. There is a lumpy bed with a worn yellow coverlet, an old secretary table, and a wooden luggage stand. As Barton crosses the room we follow to reveal a sink and wash basin, a house telephone on a rickety night stand, and a window with yellowing sheers looking on an air shaft. Barton throws his valise onto the bed where it sinks, jittering. He shrugs off his jacket. Pips of sweat stand out on Barton's brow. The room is hot. He walks across the room, switches on an oscillating fan and struggles to throw open the window. After he strains at it for a moment, it slides open with a great wrenching sound. Barton picks up his Underwood and places it on the secretary table. He gives the machine a casually affectionate pat. Next to the typewriter are a few sheets of house stationary: "THE HOTEL EARLE: A DAY OR A LIFETIME." We pan up to a picture in a cheap wooden frame on the wall above the desk. A bathing beauty sits on the beach under a cobalt blue sky. One hand shields her eyes from the sun as she looks out at a crashing surf. The sound of the surf mixes up. BARTON Looking at the picture TRACKING IN ON THE PICTURE The surf mixes up louder. We hear a gull cry. The sound snaps off with the ring of a telephone. THE HOUSE PHONE On the nightstand next to the bed. With a groan of bedsprings Barton sits into frame and picks up the telephone. VOICE How d'ya like your room! BARTON ...Who is this? VOICE Chet! BARTON ...Who? VOICE Chet! From downstairs! Barton wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. VOICE ...How d'ya like your room! A PILLOW As Barton's head drops down into frame against it. He reaches over and turns off the bedside light. He lies back and closes his eyes. A long beat. We hear a faint hum, growing louder. Barton opens his eyes. HIS POV A naked, peeling ceiling. The hum a mosquito, perhaps stops. BARTON His eyes move this way and that. After a silent beat, he shuts them again. After another silent beat, we hear muffled, probably from am adjacent room a brief, dying laugh. It is sighing and weary, like the end of a laughing fit, almost a sob. Silence again. We hear the rising mosquito hum. FADE OUT EXECUTIVE OFFICE Barton Fink is ushered into a large, light office by an obsequious middle- aged man in a sagging suit. There are mosquito bites on Barton's face. REVERSE From behind a huge white desk, a burly man in an expensive suit gets to his feet and strides across the room. MAN Is that him?! Barton Fink?! Lemme put my arms around this guy! He bear-hugs Barton. MAN ...How the hell are ya? Good trip? He separates without waiting for an answer. MAN My name is Jack Lipnik. I run this dump. You know that you read the papers. Lipnik is lumbering back to his desk. MAN Lou treating you all right? Got everything you need? What the hell's the matter with your face? What the hell's the matter with his face, Lou? BARTON It's not as bad as it looks; just a mosquito in my room LIPNIK Place okay? To Lou: LIPNIK ...Where did we put him? BARTON I'm at the Earle. LIPNIK Never heard of it. Let's move him to the Grand, or the Wilshire, or hell, he can stay at my place. BARTON Thanks, but I wanted a place that was less... LIPNIK Less Hollywood? Sure, say it, it's not a dirty word. Sat whatever the hell you want. The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don't believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week that's what we think of the writer. (to Lou) ...so what kind of pictures does he like? LOU Mr. Fink hasn't given a preference, Mr. Lipnik. LIPNIK How's about it, Bart? BARTON To be honest, I don't go to the pictures much, Mr. Lipnik LIPNIK That's okay, that's okay, that's okay that's just fine. You probably just walked in here thinking that was going to be a handicap, thinking we wanted people who knew something about the medium, maybe even thinking there was all kind of technical mumbo- jumbo to learn. You were dead wrong. We're only interested in one thing: Can you tell a story, Bart? Can you make us laugh, can you make us cry, can you make us wanna break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay. The point is, I run this dump and I don't know the technical mumbo-jumbo. Why do I run it? I've got horse-sense, goddamnit. Showmanship. And also, and I hope Lou told you this, I bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town. Did you tell him that, Lou? And I don't mean my dick's bigger than yours, it's not a sexual thing although, you're the writer, you would know more about that. Coffee? BARTON ...Yes, thank you. LIPNIK Lou. Lou immediately rises and leaves. Lipnik's tone becomes confidential: LIPNIK ...He used to have shares in the company. An ownership interest. Got bought out in the twenties muscled out according to some. Hell, according to me. So we keep him around, he's got a family. Poor schmuck. He's sensitive, don't mention the old days. Oh hell, say whatever you want. Look, barring a preference, Bart, we're gonna put you to work on a wrestling picture. Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street. That would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman... He rises and starts pacing. LIPNIK But look, I'm not one of these guys thinks poetic has gotta be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean I'm from New York myself well, Minsk if you wanna go way back, which we won't if you don't mind and I ain't askin'. Now people're gonna tell you, wrestling. Wallace Beery, it's a B picture. You tell them, bullshit. We don't make B pictures here at Capitol. Let's put a stop to that rumor right now. Lou enters with coffee. LIPNIK ...Thanks Lou. Join us. Join us. Talking about the Wallace Beery picture. LOU Excellent picture. LIPNIK We got a treatment on it yet? LOU No, not yet Jack. We just bought the story. Saturday Evening Post. LIPNIK Okay, the hell with the story. Wallace Beery is a wrestler. I wanna know his hopes, his dreams. Naturally, he'll have to get mixed up with a bad element. And a romantic interest. You know the drill. Romantic interest, or else a young kid. An orphan. What do you think, Lou? Wally a little too old for a romantic interest? Look at me, a writer in the room and I'm askin' Lou what the goddamn story should be! After a robust laugh, he beams at Barton. LIPNIK ...Well Bart, which is it? Orphan? Dame? BARTON ...Both maybe? There is a disappointed silence. Lipnik looks at Lou. Lou clears his throat. LOU ...Maybe we should do a treatment. LIPNIK Ah, hell, let Bart take a crack at it. He'll get into the swing of things or I don't know writers. Let's make it a dame, Bart, keep it simple. We don't gotta tackle the world our first time out. The important thing is we all have that Barton Fink feeling, but since you're Barton Fink I'm assuming you have it in spades. Seriously Bart, I like you. We're off to a good start. Dammit, if all our writers were like you I wouldn't have to get so goddamn involved. I'd like to see something by the end of the week. Lou is getting to his feet and signaling for Barton to do likewise. LIPNIK ...Heard about your show, by the way. My man in New York saw it. Tells me it was pretty damn powerful. Pretty damn moving. A little fruity, he said, but I guess you know what you're doing. Thank you for your heart. We need more heart in pictures. We're all expecting great things. TRACKING SHOT We are in the sixth-floor hallway of the Earle, late at night. A pair of shoes sits before each door. Faintly, from one of the rooms, we can hear the clack. clack. clack. of a typewriter. It grows louder as we track forward. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT TYPEWRITER Close on the typing so that we see only each letter as it is typed, without context. One by one the letters clack on: a-u-d-i-b-l-e. After a short beat, a period strikes. BARTON Elbows on his desk, he looks down at what he has just written. He rolls the paper up a few lines, looks some more. THE PAGE It says: FADE IN: A TENEMENT BUILDING On Manhattan's Lower East Side. Early morning traffic is audible. BARTON After a beat he rolls the sheet back into place. EXTREME CLOSE SHOT The letter-strike area. It is lined up to the last period, which is struck over by a comma. The words "as is" are typed in and we cut back to BARTON as he continues typing. He stops after several more characters and looks. Silence. Breaking the silence, muffled laughter from an adjacent room. A man's laughter. It is weary, solitary, mirthless. Barton looks up at the wall directly in front of him. HIS POV The picture of the girl on the beach. BARTON Staring, as the end-of-the-tether laughing continues. Barton looks back down at his typewriter as if to resume work, but the sound is too insistent to ignore. WIDE SHOT The room, Barton sitting at his desk, staring at the wall. The laughter. Barton pushes his chair back, goes to the door, opens it and looks out. HIS POV The empty hallway, a pair of shoes before each door. At the end of the hall a dim red bulb burns over the door to the staircase, punctuating the sick yellow glow of the line of wall sconces. The laughter, though still faint, is more resonant in the empty hall. Perhaps its quality has changed, or perhaps simply because it is so insistent, the laughter now might be taken for weeping. Barton pauses, trying to interpret the sound. He slowly withdraws into his room. HIS ROOM Barton looks down at his typewriter for a beat. The laughter/weeping continues. He walks over to his bed, sits down and picks up the house phone. BARTON Hello... Chet? This is Barton Fink in room 605. Yes, there's uh, there's someone in the room next door to mine, 604, and he's uh... He's uh... making a lot of... noise. After a beat: BARTON ...Thank you. He cradles the phone. The laughter continues for a moment or two, then abruptly stops with the muffled sound of the telephone ringing next door. Barton looks at the wall. The muffled sound of a man talking. The sound of the earpiece being pronged. Muffled footsteps next door. The sound of the neighbor's door opening and shutting. Footsteps approaching the hall. A hard, present knock at Barton's door. Barton hesitates for a beat, then rises to go get the door. ON THE DOOR As Barton opens it. Standing in the hall is a large man a very large man in short sleeves, suspenders, and loosened tie. His face is slightly flushed, with the beginnings of sweat. MAN Did you... Somebody just complained... Hastily: BARTON No, I didn't I mean, I did call down, not to complain exactly, I was just concerned that you might not that it's my business, but that you might be in some kind of... distress. You see, I was trying to work, and it's, well, it was difficult MAN Yeah. I'm damn sorry, if I bothered you. The damn walls here, well, I just apologize like hell... He sticks his hand out. MAN ...My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors... Without reaching for the hand. BARTON Barton Fink. Unfazed, Charlie Meadows unpockets a flask. CHARLIE Neighbor, I'd feel better about the damned inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink. BARTON That's all right, really, thank you. CHARLIE All right, hell, you trying to work and me carrying on in there. Look, the liquor's good, wuddya say? As he enters: CHARLIE ... You got a glass? It's the least I can do. BARTON Okay... a quick one, sure... He gets two glasses from the wash basin. Charlie sits down on the edge of the bed and uncorks his flask. CHARLIE Yeah, just a nip. I feel like hell, all the carryings-on next door. BARTON That's okay, I assure you. It's just that I was trying to work CHARLIE What kind of work do you do, Barton, if you don't mind my asking? BARTON Well, I'm a writer, actually. CHARLIE You don't say. That's a tough racket. My hat's off to anyone who can make a go of it. Damned interesting work, I'd imagine. BARTON Can be. Not easy, but CHARLIE Damned difficult, I'd imagine. As he hands Charlie a glass: BARTON And what's your line, Mr. Meadows? CHARLIE Hell no! Call me Charlie. Well Barton, you might say I sell peace of mind. Insurance is my game door-to-door, human contact, still the only way to move merchandise. He fills a glass with whiskey and swaps it for the empty glass. CHARLIE ...In spite of what you might think from tonight, I'm pretty good at it. BARTON Doesn't surprise me at all. CHARLIE Hell yes. Because I believe in it. Fire, theft, and casualty are not things that only happen to other people that's what I tell 'em. Writing doesn't work out, you might want to look into it. Providing for basic human need a fella could do worse. BARTON Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. CHARLIE What kind of scribbler are you newspaperman did you say? BARTON No, I'm actually writing for the pictures now CHARLIE Pictures! Jesus! He guffaws. CHARLIE ...I'm sorry, brother, I was just sitting here thinking I was talking to some ambitious youngster, eager to make good. Hell, you've got it made! Writing for pictures! Beating out that competition! And me being patronizing! He gestures toward his face: CHARLIE ...Is the egg showing or what?! BARTON That's okay; actually I am just starting out in the movies though I was pretty well established in New York, some renown there, CHARLIE Oh, it's an exciting time then. I'm not the best-read mug on the planet, so I guess it's no surprise I didn't recognize your name. Jesus, I feel like a heel. For the first time Barton smiles. BARTON That's okay, Charlie. I'm a playwright. My shows've only played New York. Last one got a hell of a write-up in the Herald. I guess that's why they wanted me here. CHARLIE Hell, why not? Everyone wants quality. What kind of venue, that is to say, thematically, uh... BARTON What do I write about? Charlie laughs. CHARLIE Caught me trying to be fancy! Yeah, that's it, Bart. BARTON Well, that's a good question. Strange as it may

fifty

How many times the word 'fifty' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

really

How many times the word 'really' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

quietly--

How many times the word 'quietly--' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

dress

How many times the word 'dress' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

hissed

How many times the word 'hissed' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

close

How many times the word 'close' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

true

How many times the word 'true' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

confessions

How many times the word 'confessions' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

attempt

How many times the word 'attempt' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

has

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Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

padre

How many times the word 'padre' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

feet

How many times the word 'feet' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

watch

How many times the word 'watch' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

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Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

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Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

here

How many times the word 'here' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

tone

How many times the word 'tone' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

whitlow

How many times the word 'whitlow' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

fascinated

How many times the word 'fascinated' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

gazed

How many times the word 'gazed' appears in the text?

Bassett used to say that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church is!" For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton be at the party?" he asked. "She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet enough to eat when she puts it on." He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said. "Then you are going?" "Not if I can possibly keep away. Oh, Cousin Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the family." "Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is about it." When he returned from assisting her in her panting and difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the manuscript to the town, which lay as bright and still in the sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination. Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder he realized that this was first love--that it was first love he had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in High Street. The memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think as he would he met always the haunting doubt--"What did she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly that he must see Virginia again--that he would go to Abby Goode's party, and though the party was only three days off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return comfortably to his work. CHAPTER VIII WHITE MAGIC In the centre of her bedroom, with her back turned to that bookcase which was filled with sugared false-hoods about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast. Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a thousand flowers--all the mingled sweetness of old gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I wonder how it feels to be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness. "Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look." "Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter than you are." The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way it is ever won--by turning her back on it. Never once had she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or "Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she indulged not on her own account, but because she, who could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate the virtue of humility with either her husband or her daughter. The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees, Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something" was more convincing than the chaotic march of phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death--these appeared to her as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but from which she should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately the belief that these people were all miserable because, somehow, they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared something positively reprehensible in a person who could go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things, even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the radiant energy of her desire. Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back, she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the one window through which a woman might look on a larger world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or of barrenness--yet she was forbidden to exert herself either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of the period, was to be morally passive. "Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture. Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the rector--those young and visionary eyes, which Nature, with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes were those of a prophet--of one who had lived his life in the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a man who had aged before his time under the accumulated stress of physical burdens. "How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia, stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her, and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise. "Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?" His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening. On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left." "No--no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry because he was so dull that he could not see how she suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face, and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby? Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be one's self--never to let one's soul or body relax from the attitude of expectancy into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one, and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow, hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow waiting of the centuries--above all the slow waiting--these things were in her brief vision of that single face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance. Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many faces, and from among them Susan passed under the swinging lanterns and came towards her. "Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to look at you." The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of fulfilment. Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality. After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you." His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life. His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him. "That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a red rose in your hair." At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he picked up the rose and put it into his pocket. "I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked. She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me." "Did you think I came just for the rose?" "I didn't think." "If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you." She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt--memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds--all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory--this was what the conquering male in him demanded. "I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others." She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her--as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house--and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood--all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love--these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice. "I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service. "You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles." "I don't think you are selfish--of course you have to think of your work--a man's work means so much to him." "It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and, indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the sympathetic understanding with which his imagination endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife! Always

missed

How many times the word 'missed' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

death

How many times the word 'death' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

ursula

How many times the word 'ursula' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

quietly

How many times the word 'quietly' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

told

How many times the word 'told' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

us

How many times the word 'us' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

quite

How many times the word 'quite' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

speaking

How many times the word 'speaking' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

matthew

How many times the word 'matthew' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

scene

How many times the word 'scene' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

evening

How many times the word 'evening' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

preaches

How many times the word 'preaches' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

different

How many times the word 'different' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

doors

How many times the word 'doors' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

stand

How many times the word 'stand' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

slowly

How many times the word 'slowly' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

saunters

How many times the word 'saunters' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

getting

How many times the word 'getting' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

not

How many times the word 'not' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

wounded

How many times the word 'wounded' appears in the text?

Berlin? GRUSINSKAYA Very early in the morning. BARON For Vienna? GRUSINSKAYA Can't -- can't you -- Couldn't you come too -- I think it would be better -- for us -- for us both. BARON Oh -- yes but -- later. GRUSINSKAYA Why later? BARON I have no money now -- I must get some first -- I must get some. GRUSINSKAYA I'll give you what you need -- I have money. BARON Oh no -- that would spoil everything. I'll -- I will manage somehow -- I'll manage myself. I will go with you. When does the train leave? GRUSINSKAYA Six twenty-seven in the morning... But the money? BARON Never mind -- I'll get it. I have a whole day. I'll be on that train. They move towards the door. GRUSINSKAYA I shall dance and you'll be with me and then -- listen -- After that you will come with me to Lake Como, I have a villa there. The sun will be shining. I will take a vacation -- six weeks -- eight weeks. We'll be happy and lazy. And then you will go with me to South America -- oh! Telephone starts ringing. GRUSINSKAYA You must go now. Be careful on your way to your room. BARON I'll go. -- I love you. (he kisses her) I'll be on that train. I'll get the money. She holds him back. The telephone is ringing. GRUSINSKAYA Don't do anything foolish -- I'm alarmed about you. BARON Don't worry. I'll be on the train. (he kisses her) He leaves. Alone with the telephone bell ringing, Grusinskaya breathes deeply, stretches herself. She goes to the glass and looks at herself -- smiling. Happily she takes the pearls, kisses them, drops them into the casket -- picks up the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (speaking into telephone) Yes, Pimenov... Yes... where are you, in your room? Come, I will see you now... hurry. She rises from the telephone flutteringly, she is humming a tune. She crosses to the mirror, pulls back her hair happily, she is indeed younger. Suzette is putting out a dark dress. GRUSINSKAYA Not that dark dress -- something light -- bright -- it's a sunny morning, Suzette. Suzette happily glances at her. There is a knock at the door. GRUSINSKAYA Come in. (sings) Pimenov enters, before he can speak -- GRUSINSKAYA Good morning, Pimenov. PIMENOV (a little puzzled at change in her) Good morning, Gru -- your -- Before he can start speaking of last night she quickly speaks: GRUSINSKAYA Pimenov, I have an idea -- a new ballet -- it must have mad music -- I'll explain it to you later. But now, hurry to the theatre -- I want full rehearsal -- properties -- full ballet and some musicians. Hurry -- Quickly. I will be there -- During this scene Grusinskaya has not looked at him, she is busy in the glass. Nice photography on hair and face. Side scene between Suzette and Pimenov, as Suzette shows him the cigarette case on the table. As he goes through the door Grusinskaya crosses and almost sweeps Suzette to the door with him. PIMENOV Gru -- you are positively radiant. GRUSINSKAYA Yes, Pimenov. (quickly to Suzette) One minute, Suzette, I will call you. They leave. Grusinskaya shuts the door. She sweeps happily to the telephone. GRUSINSKAYA (very very softly - her voice is like music to operator) Hello -- will you -- will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... yes... Baron von Gaigern -- yes... While she waits, she moves with a sense of dance. GRUSINSKAYA (again into telephone) Will you get me Baron von Gaigern, please... (she speaks quietly) Cherie... yes... it is you... nothing... good morning, good morning, cherie... nothing... no... just to tell you I'm happy. FADE OUT SLOWLY: Bring music up. END OF SEQUENCE "#3" SEQUENCE "#4" EXT. HOTEL - SIGN Music effect over sign "Grand Hotel." Precisely the same angle as before. The sign lights. DISSOLVE TO: LOBBY - BY SENF'S DESK The music comes up on the DISSOLVE into the original key shot of the lobby. Senf is busy. The Baron's chauffeur is standing impatiently by his desk. Business ad lib of Senf. He turns to the chauffeur who is barring the way of an important looking alien. SENF Step back please. Chauffeur makes no effort to move. Against the normal busy, happy traffic of the evening he is a sinister figure. He does not move but glares at Senf. SENF I've told you three times -- Baron von Gaigern is out. CHAUFFEUR Did he leave any message for me? SENF No, he did not -- there is no message. This whole scene is played in a very low key, almost in a whisper, it is interrupted by the entrance of the Doctor. DOCTOR (to Senf) Any letters? SENF No, doctor. During this short scene the chauffeur saunters off. Kringelein comes to the doctor. KRINGELEIN Oh, Doctor, such a day -- such a day! They move away from the scene. Kringelein's voice diminishes as the CAMERA MOVES following the chauffeur. The chauffeur saunters unthoughtfully past the florist shop and out of the door. As we pass the florist shop we see the back of the Baron in the shot. CAMERA PANS chauffeur out to door. He has not seen the Baron in the florist shop. THE CAMERA PANS back to florist shop waits for the Baron who emerges carrying his usual box of orchids. CAMERA FOLLOWS BARON back to Senf's desk. Key shot. BARON (to Senf) Madam Grusinskaya. SENF (taking the flowers and handing them to clerk) For Madam Grusinskaya. CLERK (to page boy) Madam Grusinskaya -- at once -- SENF (to Baron) Your chauffeur's been waiting, Baron. BARON (Quickly -- shortly) All right. (he glances around apprehensively) Kringelein is speaking to the doctor. The Baron approaches them. KRINGELEIN Baron, we must have gone a hundred miles an hour, at least... BARON Yes, quite. KRINGELEIN (to doctor) We've been together all day... and in an aeroplane. DOCTOR Life is changing you, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Yes, thanks to the Baron. The best shops, the very best. Look, Doctor, silk -- feels so nice on the skin... a London hat, see -- made in England, that's silk, too -- fifty marks... Look, the price is on it. That was half my salary before. The Baron is a very fine gentleman -- no one in my life has been so nice to me as the Baron. The Baron smiles. He slaps his gauntlets on his dusty coat. BARON I'm going to change and we'll meet for a drink in the Yellow Room. KRINGELEIN In the Yellow Room, where the music's playing and the ladies are? BARON (amused) Where the music's playing and the ladies are... The Baron leaves. DOCTOR No pain, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN Pain? Oh, no, Doctor. I think if I had pain I'd be too happy to notice it... NOTE: Find cut here. While Kringelein is talking, they move away from the CAMERA. CUT TO: FLASH OF BARON'S ROOM The Baron enters, throws his gloves down on the bed, turns up the light, picks up a piece of paper that's been pushed under the door, glances at it. FLASH INSERT OF THE PAPER In scrawl: "I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY. WILL BE OUTSIDE OR AT THE GARAGE." "S" CUT BACK TO: BARON We again see the apprehension on the Baron's face. He crosses, closes the window. As he does so we hear the noise from the conference room. Bring up noise from the conference room. CUT TO: CONFERENCE ROOM We must have the feeling that these men have been arguing all day. Cognac bottles, cigar ends, selzer water, remains of some sandwiches. In other words it is a business battlefield. Preysing is drawn and tired. Zinnowitz is on his feet. Flaemmchen is fast asleep in her chair, making a pretty picture. ZINNOWITZ ...and let me say again for the tenth time... (he is hoarse and tired) ...you people were quite ready for the merger. You declared yourselves... fully agreed on all the terms -- Why should the signing of these articles be suddenly held up? GERSTENKORN I've admitted that at one time we had reason for desiring ther merger -- What reason have we now? The Preysing Company has fallon upon evil days, very evil days. Preysing jumps to his feet. PREYSING Evil days -- I've shown you here -- (he bangs the paper) -- my company exports to the Balkans alone, sixty-five thousand marks worth of mop rags a year. GERSTENKORN Mop rags -- mop rags -- we're interested in something quite different! PREYSING What? SCHWEIMANN (to Gerstenkorn -- with a sigh) Shall I tell them again? GERSTENKORN (glancing at his watch) Why waste time -- it's getting late. SCHWEIMANN You see -- what we are interested in -- GERSTENKORN (interrupting) Ah, come on -- we're going home. Due to the long tedious session the men's collars are wilted. ZINNOWITZ (rising) Mr. Preysing has too scrupulous a regard for certainties... GERSTENKORN You've talked enough today, you're hoarse now. IMPORTANT CLOSEUP OF PREYSING His hand goes to his pocket. Slowly he takes out the telegram and glances at it. The following scene is played over this closeup. GERSTENKORN Sorry, Preysing. (he gets his hat) PREYSING (nervously) You've decided against the merger? GERSTENKORN Yes -- PREYSING Then, it's all over? GERSTENKORN Yes -- WAITZ (to Zinnowitz) Well -- well -- You could call my office. There is a general movement to go. FLASH OF TELEGRAM Trembling in Preysing's hand. "DEAL WITH MANCHESTER DEFINITELY OFF." GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM Gerstenkorn crosses to Preysing. GERSTENKORN Goodbye, Preysing, I hope you pull through. This is a very bad time to be in such a crisis. We've... PREYSING (interrupting) Why talk -- it's over -- it's over -- it's finished. You've broken off negotiations. You did it. You're calling them off. You had nothing on your mind all day, but Manchester, -- Manchester -- Manchester. (he develops almost a passion) You don't suppose for one moment that I'm such a fool as not to have something that I could say definitely about Manchester. (he is generating almost a passion) GERSTENKORN What? PREYSING Oh no -- no -- the session is over. Let's go, it's off. Thank you, gentlemen. (he starts packing up his papers.) GERSTENKORN If you actually have news from Manchester then... PREYSING Gentlemen, I am now free to announce... (he is perspiring, his hands are trembling) ...that the deal between my firm and the Manchester Cotton Company has been successfully negotiated. GERSTENKORN Preysing, you're joking with us. SCHWEIMANN You're a deep one. QUICK CLOSEUP OF ZINNOWITZ GENERAL SHOT OF ROOM GERSTENKORN In that case give us the articles. We'll sign at once. We know all the details... PREYSING (smiling, slowly folds up the telegram and puts it back in his pocket) I thought we'd suspended negotiations, gentlemen. GERSTENKORN Under these circumstances it's quite a different matter. PREYSING Under these circumstances we might refuse to sign. By this time, Waitz and Zinnowitz have the articles out upon the table. Preysing is perspiring. Gerstenkorn puts his arms around Preysing's shoulders. GERSTENKORN Come on -- business is business -- Come on -- Preysing stands, looking ahead of him. Gerstenkorn picks up the papers glances at them, looks at Waitz. Flaemmchen is awakening. GERSTENKORN Here's my signature -- here Preysing, sign here. ZINNOWITZ What a session this has been. While Preysing is signing. SCHWEIMANN It's twenty-five to six. WAITZ We should celebrate this with a bottle of wine. GERSTENKORN (with his hat and coat) See you soon, Preysing. Next week we'll meet and discuss further details. PREYSING Next week. Hasty hand-shaking, business of exits. Waitz, Gerstenkorn and Schweimann out. Preysing has not moved. Zinnowitz takes the agreement and waves it in the air to dry the signature. PREYSING (to himself) Next week. ZINNOWITZ You let me talk till I'm hoarse and you had Manchester sewed-up all the time. Why? Preysing does not answer. Zinnowitz amiably shrugs his shoulders. ZINNOWITZ Well -- the deal has been put through. Preysing commences to laugh suddenly with increasing violence. PREYSING Yes, it has been put through -- it has been put through. During this scene, Flaemmchen has risen, piled up her papers, glanced at her watch. During this action Flaemmchen motions to Zinnowitz that she is going down to dance, etc., Preysing is unaware of this action. Flaemmchen leaves the room trying not to attract attention. ZINNOWITZ (to Preysing) What's the matter with you? PREYSING (hysterically) Bluff -- Bluff -- all bluff. ZINNOWITZ What's bluff? PREYSING (throwing the telegram on the table) That. ZINNOWITZ (reading at out loud) 'Deal with Manchester definitely off! "Preysing, oh -- I'd never have thought it of you. PREYSING No one would have thought it of me. I've been getting rusty in Fredersdorf. Well, if bluff is what the world wants I guess I can put up as big a bluff as anyone. From now on... (he turns away) ZINNOWITZ You must go to Manchester at once yourself and really see it through. PREYSING Yes -- I must go to England -- I was desperate -- Now I don't care -- This sort of thing goes to a man's head. ZINNOWITZ What you need is some relaxation. PREYSING Yes -- that's what I want -- I'd like to tear loose -- I'd like a drink. I'd like to go down to that dancing place. I'd like to start something. ZINNOWITZ I can understand that -- after your -- uh -- PREYSING Say it -- say it -- my lie -- it's the first time in thirty years that I've ever... Where's that stenographer? Miss Flaemm... ZINNOWITZ What do you want with her? PREYSING I want to see her, I want to do some dictating -- report of the conference for my father-in-law. ZINNOWITZ She had an engagement in the Yellow Room at five o'clock -- she was in a hurry. PREYSING Zinnowitz, would you say she was pretty? ZINNOWITZ Pretty as a picture. PREYSING Let's go down and find her -- I need a drink -- Come along Zinnowitz. (he is picking up papers) I don't know anything about women -- been married for twenty-six years. ZINNOWITZ Bluff does it, Preysing, bluff does it. Goodnight. Preysing is very excited, they start to leave -- at that moment the telephone rings. PREYSING Aeh! He crosses to the telephone. PREYSING (into telephone) Hello... Father-in-law?... Is that you?... The agreement is signed -- I did it... yes, father-in-law... but now I must go to Manchester. When he picks the telephone up his hands are shaking -- DISSOLVE HANDS INTO: COCKTAIL SHAKER -- which shakes more. Music crashes up -- DISSOLVE OUT: DISSOLVE INTO BAR Kringelein and the Doctor are just entering. Kringelein is changed. His hair has been cut short and his moustache is gone, he looks almost saucy. DOCTOR (to barman) Barman -- whiskey -- (to Kringelein) For you, Mr. Kringelein? KRINGELEIN For me? -- Oh, please, something sweet and cold. BARMAN A Louisiana flip, sir? KRINGELEIN A Louisiana flip, that sounds very nice -- sweet, eh? -- During the following speech Kringelein keeps reaching for the moustache that is not there. He is thoroughly happy. DOCTOR What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat -- sleep -- loaf around -- do business -- flirt a little -- dance a little. A hundred doors to one hall and nobody knows anything about the person next to him. When you leave another takes your room and lies in your bed -- the end. At that moment Flaemmchen enters. FLAEMMCHEN Good evening, Mr. Kringelein -- Where's the Baron? KRINGELEIN I'm waiting for him here. The Baron and I have been together all day. A hundred miles an hour -- in a motor car -- and in an aeroplane -- It was marvelous -- FLAEMMCHEN Mr. Kringelein -- How you have changed, you look so nice. KRINGELEIN Oh, thank you, Miss Flaemm. Oh, please, Miss Flaemm -- Permit me, Miss Flaemm, won't you have something sweet -- a Louisiana flip. (to barman) A Louisiana flip. FLAEMMCHEN (to barman) No - absinthe. KRINGELEIN (amazed) Yes -- that -- Kringelein is beating time to the music -- a little carried away. Flaemmchen laughs. FLAEMMCHEN You like music? KRINGELEIN Yes -- it's stimulating -- a man might -- FLAEMMCHEN (mischievously) A man might what? KRINGELEIN I don't know -- I'd like to do anything -- FLAEMMCHEN (very quietly) Oh -- you would! The Baron enters quickly. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Hello -- sorry I'm late. KRINGELEIN Oh -- here you are, Baron. A drink -- A Louisiana flip? BARON Hello, Mr. Kringelein. How do you feel now? KRINGELEIN A little strange, Baron. FLAEMMCHEN I'd given you up. BARON (to Flaemmchen) Sorry. KRINGELEIN A drink, Baron -- A Louisiana flip? BARON No thanks -- keeping my head clear. FLAEMMCHEN Dance then? (they exit) KRINGELEIN (to Doctor) She's beautiful -- isn't she? DOCTOR (to Kringelein) Oh -- there are plenty of women. BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN DANCING FLAEMMCHEN What have you been doing all day? BARON Chasing around. FLAEMMCHEN Chasing what? BARON Money. They dance a few steps, in silence. FLAEMMCHEN You were very different yesterday. BARON Yesterday -- yes -- that was yesterday. They dance into the crowd. CUT BACK TO: BAR DOCTOR Well, Mr. Kringelein, are you getting what you're looking for? KRINGELEIN What, Doctor? DOCTOR A masculine paradise -- drink, the ladies, dancing... KRINGELEIN I had a very good opportunity, a young lady asked me to dance -- I ought to be able to dance, it seems to be very important. DOCTOR You must learn as quickly as your time allows -- Believe me Mr. Kringelein, a man who isn't with a woman is a dead man. KRINGELEIN Haven't you anyone -- Haven't you anybody -- you -- I mean -- Are you all alone in the world. DOCTOR (quietly) I'm always alone -- I have been everything. KRINGELEIN Everything? DOCTOR I was sent as a military surgeon to South Africa. Stinking climate. Taken prisoner. Home on parole not to fight. I was a surgeon in the Great War till the end. Grenade in the face. Carried diphtheria bacilli in the wound until 1920. Isolated two years. (pause) I've been everything. The music has stopped. CUT TO: BARON AND FLAEMMCHEN ON DANCE FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN That was lovely. BARON Will you do me a big favor? FLAEMMCHEN I'll do anything for you. BARON Would you like to make a man happy? FLAEMMCHEN (quietly) Yes -- I'd love to. BARON Then dance the next number with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Why? BARON I feel sorry for him. FLAEMMCHEN You're not a bit like you were yesterday. BARON I fell in love last night -- the real thing. FLAEMMCHEN Oh -- there's no real thing -- it doesn't exist. BARON I thought that, too -- but I found that it does. Come along, dance with Kringelein. FLAEMMCHEN Anything for you. They move off. As they approach the bar, happily Preysing pushes into scene, touches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Hello! PREYSING I must speak with you, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN (with the Baron) Presently, Mr. Preysing. PREYSING It's urgent. BARON Pardon me, the lady has urgent business here with me. PREYSING (to himself) Insolent -- Berlin manners. At that moment Kringelein has descended from the stool and crosses to Preysing. KRINGELEIN I wish you a very good evening, Mr. Preysing. You are staying here, too, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING I don't know you. KRINGELEIN Oh -- you must know me -- Kringelein at the plant. Assistant bookkeeper, building C, room twenty-three -- third floor. FLAEMMCHEN (quickly) Come and dance with me, Mr. Kringelein. PREYSING I must speak to you, Miss Flaemm -- business. FLAEMMCHEN (lightly) Tomorrow morning. PREYSING No -- now. FLAEMMCHEN Do you gentlemen know each other, Mr. Kringelein -- Mr. Preysing -- Baron von Gaigern. They bow stiffly. PREYSING Mr. Kringelein will be a good friend and not accept your invitation to dance. KRINGELEIN I could not think of not accepting. PREYSING You say that you are employed by us in Fredersdorf, and here you are in Berlin, indulging in diversions which ill befit your position and which are very much beyond your means -- Quite extraordinary, Mr. Kringelein, I think we will look into your books. Kringelein stands watching Preysing, his eyes narrowing. FLAEMMCHEN Now, children, no fighting -- save that for the office. Let's have our dance. (her arms go around Kringelein. They dance off) PREYSING I'll remember you, Mr. Kringelein. BARON Oh, let the poor devil alone. PREYSING I did not ask your advice. The two men eye each other; for a moment there might be a fight. BARON I think it would be much better if you went away. PREYSING We shall see who remains here the longer. BARON (shrugging his shoulders) As you will. Preysing leans against the bar, orders a cognac. The Baron turns his back to him, watching the dancing. CUT TO: FAEMMCHEN AND KRINGELEIN ON FLOOR FLAEMMCHEN You must look at my face and not at the floor. KRINGELEIN Yes. FLAEMMCHEN You're trembling. KRINGELEIN I never danced before -- in public. FLAEMMCHEN You dance splendidly. KRINGELEIN I'm happy, Miss Flaemm. FLAEMMCHEN Really? KRINGELEIN For the first time in my life, I'm happy. Kringelein shows signs of exhaustion. Flaemmchen watches him quickly. FLAEMMCHEN Let's stop -- I'm tired. It is obvious that she has stopped because of Kringelein's distress. KRINGELEIN Thank you, Miss Flaemm. They move back to the bar. Preysing catches Flaemmchen's arm. PREYSING Well now, Miss Flaemm, we can talk. KRINGELEIN Some champagne, Miss Flaemm? PREYSING You may go, Mr. Kringelein. KRINGELEIN Does the world belong to you, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING What is this insolence? KRINGELEIN Do you think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. PREYSING Go away -- go away. FLAEMMCHEN Please -- please! KRINGELEIN You don't like to see me enjoying myself. PREYSING Who are you? -- An embezzler most likely. KRINGELEIN An embezzler -- you're going to take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady -- who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing. PREYSING You're discharged. KRINGELEIN Me? PREYSING Yes you -- shut your mouth -- get out -- you're discharged. Kringelein's hat has fallen from the stool upon the floor. Flaemmchen picks it up, brushes it. Kringelein starts to laugh. The Baron steps into the scene. The Doctor slowly comes from the bar. KRINGELEIN You can't discharge me -- I'm my own master now -- at last. I'm ill, I'm going to die -- do you understand? I'm going to die very soon. Nothing can happen to me now. Nobody can do anything any more to me. By the time you can have discharged me I shall have been dead already. (his laugh becomes a convulsive sob) The Baron steps between the two looking straight into Preysing's face. DOCTOR Come, Mr. Kringelein. (he pulls him out of the scene towards the bar) PREYSING (his fists clenched, between his teeth) The man's insane -- he acts as if he is glad he is going to die... (hesitates -- to Flaemmchen) I shall see you in the lobby in half an hour. END SEQUENCE "#4" SEQUENCE "#5" FADE IN: KEY SHOT OF LOBBY OVER SENF'S HEAD General activity. The house detective, later identified, is talking to the chauffeur. He leaves the chauffeur and crosses to Senf. HOUSE DETECTIVE Better let him stay -- I've sent for the Baron... How's your wife coming along? SENF I was at the hospital all night walking up and down the corridor. They wouldn't let me in to see her. She has the pains, but the child doesn't come and I have to stay here chained to this desk. HOUSE DETECTIVE It will be all right. SENF I hope so. At that moment Preysing enters. PREYSING Did you send that page? SENF The young lady's there, sir. Preysing glances off to see Flaemmchen standing looking around. Preysing crosses to Flaemmchen. FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes, Mr. Preysing? PREYSING Sit here. (calls to a boy) Cognac -- for you? FLAEMMCHEN Nothing. At that moment the Baron and Kringelein pass. Preysing glances up at Kringelein as he passes. PREYSING I'm going to keep an eye on that Kringelein fellow. I'll find out where he gets the money to hang around the Grand Hotel. FLAEMMCHEN Well -- you want me? PREYSING (looks straight at her) Yes. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING I must go to England -- at once. FLAEMMCHEN Well? PREYSING You see, I'd like to take a secretary with me for my correspondence and -- humm -- humm -- for company on the trip -- I'm nervous -- I need somebody -- I don't know if you quite understand me. You said you have travelled with gentlemen -- and I mean -- FLAEMMCHEN I understand perfectly. PREYSING What do you think your salary would be -- for such a trip? FLAEMMCHEN Wait -- I must figure it up. (she smokes and thinks) First, I'll need -- clothes -- shoes -- it's cold in England in March, I'll need a suit... You'd want me to look nice? PREYSING Of course -- of course. (he is fidgeting) FLAEMMCHEN A thousand marks -- (she waits anxiously thinking it might be too much) PREYSING It's agreed -- I will get a room here for you. She is looking away. PREYSING I can get a room here in the Grand Hotel for you. She still looks away. PREYSING Can you pay some attention to me? FLAEMMCHEN Oh, yes. PREYSING (looking off) Insolent young cub! FLAEMMCHEN You mean Baron von Gaigern? PREYSING Baron! FLAEMMCHEN Well, he's a gentleman! THE BARON Who is leaning against a chair by a pillar with Kringelein. THE CAMERA APPROACHES THEM. They are not speaking. The Baron is looking off at: FLASH A SHOT FROM HIS ANGLE OF CHAUFFEUR Sauntering between the door and Senf's desk. BACK TO: THE BARON He slumps on the arm of the chair. KRINGELEIN (watching him) The Baron is tired? BARON No, Kringelein, not tired, -- just -- (he shrugs his shoulders) Well -- well -- KRINGELEIN Perhaps this evening, Baron, we could go to the Casino -- the place we passed with the marvelous bright lights? BARON I'd like to Kringelein, but I can't -- I am broke! KRINGELEIN Broke -- A Baron? But, Baron -- The Baron looks off, sees the chauffeur -- CUT IN: FLASH OF CHAUFFEUR Arguing with Senf. CUT BACK TO: BARON BARON Excuse me, Mr. Kringelein. (he strides off) Keep the CAMERA on Kringelein as he watches the Baron. He takes out his pocket-book and looks at his money commencing to count it. The thought is in his mind of offering the Baron money. Charming scene. CUT TO: BARON AND CHAUFFEUR Moving into position. They are talking. BARON (quietly) I've quit. CHAUFFEUR You can't. BARON I'm not going to get those pearls and neither are you. CHAUFFEUR What about the money? BARON I'll pay you back. CHAUFFEUR How? BARON I have an idea working in my head... (he glances at Kringelein) CHAUFFEUR You might find a bullet through that head... BARON If you did that, you'd get nothing except the police after you. If you wait -- I'll give you your six thousand back -- At that moment a voice is heard. VOICE Madam Grusinskaya's car -- Madam Grusinskaya's car. It is passed along. INSIDE PORTER (calls through his little telephone) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- MEGAPHONE (outside) Madam Grusinskaya's car -- BARON (quickly to chauffeur) Later. (Chauffeur exits with bad grace.) Baron looks off... FULL SHOT -- FROM HIS ANGLE Like a pageant Grusinskaya sweeps forward -- pretty shot. Music comes up. Grusinskaya is followed by Suzette, Pimenov and Meierheim. People turn to look at her. She sweeps forward. As she gets to the door she faces the Baron. She steps quickly aside to him. Pimenov and Meierheim pause. GRUSINSKAYA (to them) Go on please -- go on, Suzette. She and the Baron are alone. BARON (quietly) Bless you... GRUSINSKAYA Are you coming to the theatre? Oh -- I shall dance tonight -- How I shall dance -- I want to feel that you are in the theatre. BARON I can't. GRUSINSKAYA No? BARON No! I can't explain now. Oh, look -- the pearls. You wear them now... GRUSINSKAYA Why do you think -- BARON Why? GRUSINSKAYA They've brought me such good luck -- you -- He takes her hand, kisses it quietly. GRUSINSKAYA I'm worried about you. BARON Don't. GRUSINSKAYA On the train? BARON Yes -- I will be on the train. GRUSINSKAYA Till then. BARON Bless you -- During this scene Kringelein has been hovering nearby. As Grusinskaya turns away and exits, Kringelein approaches the Baron, who is standing perfectly still, looking off, -- his mind miles away. KRINGELEIN Was the Baron joking, or is it really true that the Baron is -- in financial straits. BARON (lightly) Absolutely true, Kringelein and I have to raise some money immediately. KRINGELEIN If the Baron -- if you would permit me -- The Baron looks at him suddenly. BARON What? KRINGELEIN I would be awfully glad to oblige, you've been so decent to me. Three hundred? BARON If I could get into a game I might win some. KRINGELEIN Gambling! I'd like that. I have over six thousand eight hundred marks with me. BARON If we could scare up some men to play. KRINGELEIN We could come to my room. BARON (with enthusiasm) Good! At that moment Flaemmchen passes. BARON Going? FLAEMMCHEN Yes -- Flaemmchen hesitates as though she wanted to say something that is on her mind. A curious little scene. She doesn't speak, she just turns suddenly through the door. The Baron glances after her

mop

How many times the word 'mop' appears in the text?

Boogie Nights Script at IMSDb. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3785444-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) The web's largest movie script resource! Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

torrance

How many times the word 'torrance' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

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How many times the word 'long' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

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How many times the word 'end' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

pee

How many times the word 'pee' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

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How many times the word 'home' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

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How many times the word 'late' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

lawyer

How many times the word 'lawyer' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

better

How many times the word 'better' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

desk

How many times the word 'desk' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

ghost

How many times the word 'ghost' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

adams

How many times the word 'adams' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

hatred:--"napoleon

How many times the word 'hatred:--"napoleon' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

mine

How many times the word 'mine' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

forest

How many times the word 'forest' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

hardness

How many times the word 'hardness' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

holds

How many times the word 'holds' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

scratches

How many times the word 'scratches' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

contrived

How many times the word 'contrived' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

that

How many times the word 'that' appears in the text?

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Search IMSDb Alphabetical # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Genre Action Adventure Animation Comedy Crime Drama Family Fantasy Film-Noir Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Short Thriller War Western Sponsor TV Transcripts Futurama Seinfeld South Park Stargate SG-1 Lost The 4400 International French scripts Movie Software Rip from DVD Rip Blu-Ray Latest Comments Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith10/10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens10/10 Batman Begins9/10 Collateral10/10 Jackie Brown8/10 Movie Chat Message Yell ! ALL SCRIPTS BOOGIE NIGHTS by Paul Thomas Anderson 1 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT CAMERA holds on this PACKED disco on Van Nuys Blvd. TITLE CARD: "San Fernando Valley, 1977" A CADILLAC SEVILLE pulls up to the valet area and CAMERA (STEADICAM) moves across the street, towards the car, landing close; From the Seville steps, JACK HORNER (50s) and AMBER WAVES (early 30s). CAMERA follows them (this is one continous shot) as they pass the crowd, greet a DOORMAN and enter -- INSIDE THE NIGHTCLUB. Twice as packed inside as outside. Music is full blast. Amber and Jack are greeted by; MAURICE t.t. RODRIGUEZ (30s). Owner of the nightclub. Puerto Rican. Wearing a suit and fifteen gold chains. MAURICE Jackie-Jack-Jack and Miss Lovely Amber Waves -- AMBER Hi, Maurice. JACK You bad ass little spick. How are you, honey? MAURICE Pissed off you ain't been around -- JACK -- I been on vacation. MAURICE Don't stay away this long from my club ever again, Jackie-Jack-Jack. JACK I promise. Maurice takes Amber's hand and gives it a kiss. MAURICE You are the foxiest bitch in ten countries. AMBER You're such a charmer. MAURICE (to Jack) I got you all set up at your booth. I wanna send over some clams on the half shell. JACK Beautiful. MAURICE Just remember, Jack: I'm available and ready. Cast me and find out -- JACK Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amber and Jack head off towards the booth. CAMERA stays with Maurice, follows him to the bar area, where he shouts some orders to a WAITER. MAURICE Clams on the half shell to Jack and Amber -- over there -- go! The WAITER takes off to the kitchen, Maurice walks onto the dance floor and greets three people; REED ROTHCHILD, 20s, tall and skinny, BECKY BARNETT, 20s, black girl in silk, BUCK SWOPE, 20s, black guy in cowboy gear. MAURICE Hello there, kiddies. REED/BUCK/BECKY Hi, hey, hi, Maurice. MAURICE Having a good time? BECKY Excellent. MAURICE Great, great, great. Maurice moves away to greet some more people. CAMERA stays with Reed, Becky and Buck, does a 360 around them. Reed and Becky Disco Dance. Buck does some Cowboy-Type Moves. Moments later, the WAITER carrying clams on the half shell passes and CAMERA picks up with him, follows him to Jack's booth, where he presents them; WAITER Compliments of Maurice. JACK Thank you. AMBER Can I get a Marguerita, please? JACK Seven-Up, here -- The WAITER exits, CAMERA PANS with him for a moment, leading to a young girl wearing rollerskates, ROLLERGIRL (aged 18). She always, always wears rollerskates. CAMERA PANS with her back to Jack's booth. ROLLERGIRL Hi. JACK Hello, honey. AMBER (to Rollergirl) Did you call that girl today? ROLLERGIRL I forgot. AMBER If you don't do it tomorrow, then it's the weekend and you'll never be able to get in to see her -- ROLLERGIRL OK. Rollergirl scratches her crotch as she speaks. Amber notices; AMBER What's the matter down there? ROLLERGIRL I gotta go pee. AMBER Well go, then. CAMERA stays with Rollergirl, following her across the dance floor. She passes Buck, Becky and Reed, says hello, dances a moment, then continues on -- into the clearing off the dance floor, heading for the bathroom. She passes something, CAMERA moves away towards this something: A bus boy cleaning a table, EDDIE ADAMS, aged 17. CAMERA moves into a CU -- blending to SLOW MOTION (40fps) for a moment. (Note: In the text Eddie Adams will be referred to as Dirk Diggler.) ANGLE, JACK'S TABLE. Jack turns his head, looks across the dance floor and sees this kid cleaning the table. ANGLE, DIRK DIGGLER. He looks up, catches Jack looking back at him, then turns away, disappears into a back room. CAMERA DOLLIES in on Jack, who at that moment, is approached by a figure entering FRAME. Short, buffed out LITTLE BILL (late 40s). This is Jack's Assistant Director. LITTLE BILL Jack. JACK Hey, Little Bill. LITTLE BILL Whatsa schedule look like? Are we still on day after tomorrow? JACK I wanna do it the day after the day after tomorrow. LITTLE BILL For sure? 'Cause I wanna call Rocky, Scotty, Kurt and all those guys -- Jack's attention is with the backroom that Dirk entered. He stands and heads away. JACK Absolutely. But I wanna keep it small. I wanna keep a small crew on this one -- LITTLE BILL -- a relaxed deal. JACK Exactly. LITTLE BILL Do you have a script yet? JACK Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day -- Jack is off across the dance floor. CUT TO: 2 INT. BACKROOM/KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER JACK Hey. DIRK Hey. JACK How ya doin'? DIRK Fine. JACK How old are you? DIRK I have a work permit, I got the paper -- JACK No, no, no. Not like that. How long have you worked here? DIRK A month. JACK Maurice give you a job here? DIRK Yeah. JACK How much he pay you? DIRK I'm not supposed to say how much I make. JACK He's a friend of mine -- DIRK Well you'll have to ask him. JACK You live around here, Canoga - Reseda? DIRK Um . . . no . . . do you know where Torrance is? JACK How do you get here? DIRK I take the bus. JACK So what do you wanna do? DIRK What? JACK You take the bus from Torrance to work in Reseda, why don't you work in Torrance? DIRK I don't want to. JACK . . . ok . . . DIRK So . . . you want five or ten? JACK . . . what . . . ? DIRK If you wanna watch me jack off it's ten bucks. If you just wanna look at it then it's five. JACK Guys come in, ask you to jack off for them, ask to see it? DIRK Yeah. JACK Have you done it tonight? DIRK Couple times. JACK And you can do it again? DIRK If you want, if you got ten bucks. BEAT. Jack extends his hand. JACK I'm Jack. DIRK Eddie. Eddie Adams. JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance. I'm Jack Horner, Filmmaker. DIRK Really? JACK I make adult films. Erotic pictures. BEAT, THEN; DIRK . . . I know who you are. I read about you in a magazine. "Inside Amber," "Amanda's Ride." You made those -- JACK So you know me, you know I'm not full of doggy-doo-doo -- DIRK Yeah . . . . JACK So why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I'd love to but . . . I'm working -- JACK You need money, you have to pay the rent -- DIRK . . . No . . . I mean, yeah. I need money. But I don't pay rent. I live at home. JACK Tell me how old you are, Eddie. DIRK . . . I'm seventeen . . . . JACK You're a seventeen year old piece of gold. DIRK Yeah, right. JACK Why don't you come back to my table, have a drink, meet some people -- DIRK I can't do that to Maurice. JACK You're a good worker, yeah? DIRK I'm sorry, I do know you, I know who you are, I'd love to have a drink with you and I know you're not full of -- JACK -- doggy-doo-doo. DIRK Yeah, yeah. But I just can't walk out on Maurice. I'm sorry. BEAT, THEN; JACK It seems to me, beneath those jeans, there's something wonderful just waiting to get out -- Jack leaves. 3 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT (LATER) The club is closing, Maurice is locking up and turning the lights off out front. CAMERA hangs around with Buck, Becky and Reed. (Director's Note: Reference improv. Notes) Jack and Amber cruise past in his Seville, say so long and head up Van Nuys Blvd. They pass Little Bill who walks to his old Station Wagon, rips a parking ticket off the windshield and gets behind the wheel. Dirk Diggler exits the club from a side door and heads off -- CUT TO: 4 OMITTED 5 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LAUREL CANYON - NIGHT - LATER Jack and Amber enter the house. It resembles the Jungle Room at Graceland. He heads for the kitchen, she makes a drink . . . JACK You want somethin' to eat? I'm onnamake some eggs. AMBER I'm goin' to sleep. JACK Goodnight, honey-tits. Sleep beautiful. CUT TO: 6 INT. AMBER'S BEDROOM/JACK'S HOUSE - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER ECU, AMBER. She does a quick line of coke. BEAT. She takes a valium, lights a cigarette, then picks up the phone; AMBER Tom . . . hi . . . yeah. I know it's late, but . . . (beat) Yeah. Is Andy there? Is he . . . ? I'd like to say hello, I'd like to say hello to my son and that's all. (beat) Lemme tell you something, Tom. Lemme tell you something you don't know; I know a lawyer, you understand? You might think I don't but I do and I'll take you to court . . . . (beat) No . . . please don't, Tom, Tom, Tom -- Dial tone from the phone. She hangs up. 7 INT. LITTLE BILL'S HOUSE - NIGHT Little Bill enters his house quietly, turns on a small light to help guide him down a hallway. FROM A BEDROOM DOOR we hear the sounds of MOANING AND GROANING. Little Bill walks to the door, hesitates, then opens -- CUT TO: 8 INT. LITTLE BILL'S BEDROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT LITTLE BILL'S WIFE and a BIG STUD are doing it on the bed. They stop a moment and casually look at him. LITTLE BILL What the fuck are you doing? LITTLE BILL'S WIFE The fuck does it look like I'm doing? I've got a cock in my pussy, you idiot. BIG STUD Will you close the door? LITTLE BILL Will I close the door? You're fucking my wife, asshole. BIG STUD Relax, little man. LITTLE BILL'S WIFE Just get out, Bill. Fucking sleep on the couch. (to Big Stud) Keep going, Big Stud. Big Stud continues. Little Bill watches a moment in a haze then closes the door. CUT TO: 9 INT. DIRK'S PARENTS HOUSE/TORRANCE - NIGHT Dirk enters quietly, walks a hallway and goes into his room. CUT TO: 10 INT. DIRK'S ROOM - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT Dirk enters his room and begins to remove his clothes. He turns the volume low on his stereo. He stands in front of his mirror, does a few flexes, some dance moves, some karate moves, etc. CAMERA DOES A SLOW 360 PAN AROUND THE ROOM. Posters on the walls of Travolta, Pacino, a 1976 Corvette, Bruce Lee, Hawaii, a Penthouse centerfold, Luke Skywalker, etc. CAMERA LANDS BACK ON DIRK. DIRK That's right. FADE OUT, CUT TO: 11 OMITTED 12 OMITTED 13 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE/KITCHEN - MORNING Dirk eats breakfast. His MOTHER (mid 40s) stands, washing a dish. His FATHER (50s) enters, dressed in suite. He crosses the kitchen INSERT, CU Father, stubble on his face, places a kiss on the cheek of Mother. FATHER Good morning. MOTHER . . . Jesus. Please, okay? Shave if you're gonna do that, it scratches my face. Father takes a seat at the breakfast table, looks to Dirk. FATHER How's that work, you get home late, huh? DIRK Yeah. MOTHER If you wanna work in a nightclub you should . . . if it's so important . . . you should find one closer. DIRK . . . yeah . . . They eat in silence. DIRK I've gotta get to work. MOTHER . . . at a car wash . . . DIRK What? MOTHER You work at a car wash, school never occurred to you? Dirk stands up, places his plates in the sink and exits. CUT TO: 14 OMITTED 15 OMITTED 16 INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY A crowded high school geometry classroom. In the back of the class, sitting at a desk is Rollergirl. A TEACHER walks about, handing out the final exam. Rollergirl looks it over; a lot of questions, diagrams and generally confusing material. She looks across the room; Two BOYS are looking at her and chuckling to themselves. One guy looks to the other and makes a "blow job" gesture. She looks away, they continue their gestures and giggling. Other students notice and smile. CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON ROLLERGIRL. She stands up, heads for the door -- the teacher calls after her -- but she's gone. CUT TO: 17 INT. SUPER-DUPER STEREO SHOP - DAY A semi-high end stereo store in the valley. Buck, dressed in his usual cowboy-digs, is talking to a CUSTOMER about a stereo unit. The manager, a skinny-white guy with a mustache and mustard suit, JERRY (30s) is standing nearby. BUCK -- so basically you're gettin' twice the base, cause of the TK421 modification we got in this system here. CUSTOMER I don't know - do I need that much bass? BUCK If you want a system to handle what you want -- yes you do. See this system here. This is Hi-Fi. "High Fidelity." What that means is that it's the highest quality fidelity. CUSTOMER It's the price -- BUCK I have this unit at home. CUSTOMER . . . really . . . ? BUCK Yes. But -- I've got it modified with the TK421, which is a bass unit that basically kicks in another two, maybe three quads when you really crank -- lemme put another eight track in so you can get a better idea what I'm talkin about -- Buck ejects the Eight Track that was playing and puts in his own of a country western song. BUCK Hear that bass? It kicks and turns and curls up in your belly, makes you wanna freaky-deaky, right? If you get this unit as it is -- it won't sound like this without the modification -- and we do that for a small price. The Customer listens another moment, then; CUSTOMER Thank you for your time. BUCK No problem. The Customer exits and Jerry approaches Buck. JERRY . . . the fuck was that? BUCK Wha? JERRY Have I told you? Huh? Have I? BUCK What? I don't -- JERRY Alright: A.) You play that country western-crap and no one's gonna buy a stereo. You throw on some KC and the Sunshine Band, a guy looks a particular way -- and you've seen the profile sheet -- you throw on some Led Zeppelin. No. Instead, you play this twingy-twangy, yappy-dappy music. What kinda brother are you anyway, listening to that shit? BUCK Hey, Jerry, look -- JERRY No, you look. I gave you a job here because I thought your film work might bring some nice pussy in the place -- and it has -- but I can't have anymore fuck ups -- you dig? BUCK Yeah. JERRY Alright. Go unload the new 484's from the back room. Buck goes to the back room. CUT TO: 18 INT. SHERYL LYNN'S BEDROOM - DAY - LATER Dirk is in bed with a young neighborhood girl, SHERYL LYNN PARTRIDGE. Her room is decorated in pastels with equestrian things all around. Horse models, trophies from riding, blue ribbons, etc. DIRK I have to get back. SHERYL LYNN Once more. DIRK I have to get back to work. SHERYL LYNN Give it to me, Eddie. DIRK Don't make me pounce you, Sheryl Lynn. SHERYL LYNN Ohhhh-baby, baby, baby. DIRK I'll do it -- SHERYL LYNN Promise? DIRK That's it. Dirk jumps up and starts bouncing up and down on the bed, naked and flapping. She stares at his crotch, shakes her head; DICK (OC) What? SHERYL LYNN You're so beautiful. DICK (OC) Yeah . . . SHERYL LYNN Do you know how good you are at doing this, Eddie? Having sex . . . fucking me . . . making love to me? Dirk looks down. BEAT. DIRK Everyone has one thing, y'think? I mean: Everyone is given one special thing . . . . right? SHERYL LYNN That's right. DIRK Everyone is blessed with One Special Thing. Dirk kneels down to her; DIRK I want you to know: I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That's what I want and it's what I'm gonna get. SHERYL LYNN I know. DIRK And once I get it: I'm never gonna stop and I'll never, ever make a mistake. They Kiss. CUT TO: 19 INT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT Nightclub is in full swing on a Friday Night. CAMERA hangs with Dirk for a while as he buses tables. ANGLE, JACK'S BOOTH Rollergirl comes over to speak with Jack. He whispers something in her ear. She nods, "I understand," and rolls away -- CUT TO: 20 INT. HOT TRAXX/HALLWAY - NIGHT - THAT MOMENT CAMERA follows on the heels of the rollerskates as they move down the hallway and into -- THE KITCHEN Dirk is washing dishes. He looks up and spots Rollergirl. She lifts a skate up just a little . . . She rolls closer to Dirk and pulls him into A CLOSET SPACE She goes down on him, unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. She hesitates. DOLLY IN CLOSE ON HER FACE. She smiles up at Dirk. CUT TO: 21 OMITTED 22 EXT. HOT TRAXX NIGHTCLUB - NIGHT - LATER Closing hour. Dirk exits a side door and starts walking. Jack, Amber and Rollergirl in the Seville pull along side him; JACK Hey. Eddie. DIRK Hello. Jack? JACK Yeah. You wanna ride? DIRK I'm goin' pretty far. ROLLERGIRL You remember me? Couple hours ago? DIRK Yeah . . . I remember you. AMBER Come with us, sweetie. DIRK Okay. Dirk gets in the backseat of the car with Rollergirl. CUT TO: 23. INT. CANDY'S COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT - LATER In a booth, after the meal. Dirk and Rollergirl on one side, Jack and Amber on the other. JACK This thing here, I mean, you understand one thing and that's this: It costs. I mean, this stuff costs good ol' American Green. You got film, you got lights, you got sound, lab fees, developing, synching, editing -- next thing you know you're spending thirty/forty thousand a picture. DIRK That's a lot of money. JACK Hell yes it's a lot of money, but lemme tell you something else: You make a good film and there's practically no end to the amount of money you can make, Eddie. AMBER Have you seen Jack's house? CAMERA HOLDS ON AMBER. She watches Dirk. DIRK (OC) No. JACK (OC) He'll see it. ROLLERGIRL (OC) He'll see it. JACK (OC) Eddie: You got ten, fifteen people around and that's just to make sure the lighting is right . . . shit, this is not an operation for the weak, and lemme tell you something else: When all is said and done, you gotta have the juice, you understand? I mean . . . you can work on your arms, your legs, workout morning, day, noon, night, the whole deal, but when it comes right down to it . . . what we need is Mr. Torpedo Area, y'understand? Mr. Fun Zone? Okay, let's say you got that: right? And You Do Got, Yeah? He looks to Rollergirl. She smiles. CAMERA OFF AMBER NOW. JACK I can go out -- tonight -- the reputation I got: I can find myself 15/20 guys, cocks the size of Willie Mays Baseball Bat: Do I want that? No. Do I need that? No. I need actors. AMBER Uhhh-ohhh . . . here we go -- JACK -- Alright, yeah, I need the big dick, and the big tits -- that GETS them in the theater. What keeps them in their seats even after they've come? Huh? The beauty and the acting. If you're able to give it up and show the world: No, not just your cock. Fuck that. What I'm talking about is showing your insides, from your heart . . . you understand? Hey, Sure: GET THEM IN THE THEATER. That's one thing. I don't want 'em showing up, sitting down, jacking off and splitting on the story. I don't want to make that film. I wanna make the thing that keeps 'em around even after they've come . . . what happens when you come? You're done, you wanna split. My idea, my goal: Suck 'em in with the story . . . they'll squirt their load and sit in it . . . Just To See How The Story Ends. Sometimes we make these films, we wanna make people laugh a little, then get into it and fuck heavy: That's good and that's fine. But I got a dream of making a film that's true . . . true and right and dramatic. DIRK . . . Right . . . right . . . I understand. AMBER Don't listen too hard to all this, honey . . . it's just nice in theory. JACK It's a dream to be able to find a cock and an actor. ROLLERGIRL Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream. DIRK If you don't have dreams you have nightmares. HOLD. Amber, Jack and Rollergirl look at Dirk. CUT TO: 24 INT. JACK'S HOUSE/LIVING ROOM - NIGHT CAMERA DOES A 180 AROUND THE MAIN PART OF THE HOUSE, LANDS THE ANGLE WITH DIRK. He's sitting on a couch, hands folded across his lap. OC we hear Jack, Rollergirl and Amber moving about and talking. JACK (OC) Did you want a Fresca, Eddie? DIRK No thanks. JACK You're sure . . . ? ROLLERGIRL (OC) . . . you're out of limes, Jack. JACK (OC) Check in the studio fridge . . . AMBER (OC) I'm going to bed. JACK (OC) Good night, honey. AMBER (OC) Good night, Jackie. Don't stay up too late. Good night, Eddie. I'm glad you came by. She leans into FRAME and gives Dirk a good-night kiss. AMBER You're great. DIRK Thank you. CAMERA PANS WITH AMBER AND LEADS TO AN ANGLE WITH JACK. HOLD. JACK She's the best, Eddie. A mother. A real and wonderful mother to all those who need love. DIRK (OC) She's really nice. JACK So what do you think . . . I think we ought to be in business together. DIRK (OC) . . . yeah . . . ? JACK What do you think of Rollergirl? DIRK (OC) She's . . . she's really great . . . JACK Would you like to get it on with her? DIRK (OC) Have sex? JACK Yeah. DIRK (OC) Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, yes. She's . . . she's really foxy. JACK Bet your ass she is -- Rollergirl enters back into the house. CAMERA SWING PANS OVER: ROLLERGIRL You're officially out of limes, Jack. JACK I'll get you some more tomorrow. Come over here a minute. Sit next to Eddie on the couch there. ROLLERGIRL Here We Go! Are We Gonna Fuck? JACK Yes you are. ROLLERGIRL Oh, wait, wait, wait, then. She rolls over to the Hi-Fi system and picks a record. She sets the needle on the turntable and rolls over to the couch -- in one swift motion ripping her clothes off. ROLLERGIRL You ready? DIRK Are you? ROLLERGIRL Ohhh-yeah. They kiss. They lean back on the couch. Dirk stops a moment. DIRK Are you gonna take your skates off? ROLLERGIRL I don't take my skates off. DIRK Okay. ROLLERGIRL Don't fucking come in me. JACK Don't come in her, Eddie. I want you to pull it out and jack off, make sure you aim it towards her face. ROLLERGIRL Fuck you, Jack. JACK Towards her tits, then. CAMERA HOLDS ON JACK. OC sounds of Dirk and Rollergirl making out on the couch. SLOW ZOOM INTO CU. ON JACK. CUT TO: 25 INT. DIRK'S HOUSE - EARLY MORNING - LATER Dirk enters quietly, walks down the hallway, passing the kitchen. His MOTHER is there, looking at him. HOLD, THEN; DIRK Hi. MOTHER Where were you? DIRK Nowhere. MOTHER Shut up. Shut up. Where were you? Dirk walks down the hall towards his room. MOTHER You see that little slut girl you see? Sheryl? Sheryl Lynn? DIRK Don't say that. MOTHER Does it make you feel like a stud to see trash like that? Huh? What is she? Your girl-friend? DIRK She's not my girlfriend. MOTHER She's a little whore and a little piece of trash . . . I know you're not the only one that she sees. DIRK What . . . what're you . . . you don't know. MOTHER I've heard things about her. That girl. Don't think I don't know what goes on when I'm not here . . . I wash your sheets, kid. I know she's been here. Or are you doing some other thing in there? With your music and your posters on the wall? CUT TO: 26 INT. BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk's FATHER is sitting on the edge of his bed, listening the fight outside. MOTHER (OC) Why don't you go to your little whore, Sheryl Lynn. Your little GIRLFRIEND. DIRK (OC) Maybe I will. MOTHER (OC) Oh yeah? Yeah, what are you gonna do? DIRK (OC) I dunno, I'll do something. 27 INT. HALLWAY - MORNING - THAT MOMENT MOTHER You can't do anything. You're a loser. You'll always be a loser -- you couldn't even finish high school because you were too stupid -- so what are you gonna do? DIRK I'll do something . . . I'll do it. I'll go somewhere and do something, maybe I'll run away where you can never find me. MOTHER Go ahead. Go ahead and fuck that little GIRL. Dirk heads for his room, Mother follows. 29 INT. DIRK'S BEDROOM - MORNING - THAT MOMENT Dirk heads for a drawer and starts to grab some clothes. MOTHER What do you think you're doing? DIRK I'm getting my stuff -- MOTHER -- you think that's your stuff? That's not your stuff . . . you didn't pay for that -- it's not yours because you didn't pay for it, stupid. Dirk stops. His Mother looks to the posters on his wall. MOTHER None of this stuff is yours. This: She starts to rip his posters from the wall. Dirk stands. CAMERA begins a SLOW DOLLY INTO CU. MOTHER (OC) If you're gonna leave, you leave with what you've got: Nothing. Y'see . . . you treat me like this and this is what you get. That's fair. Huh? You wanna live that way? Fuck that little whore. I've taken care of you all your miserable fucking life . . . . CAMERA ARRIVES CU. ON DIRK. He's starting to cry. MOTHER (OC) . . . you pay for it . . . you owe me for all the shit I've done for you in your life . . . . you little fucker . . . you understand? Think you're gonna be this? Huh? These god damn posters -- you're not gonna be this -- you're gonna be shit . . . because you're stupid. DIRK I'm not stupid. MOTHER Yes you are. DIRK Why are you so mean to me? You're my mother . . . MOTHER Not by choice. DIRK Don't. Don't be mean to me. MOTHER You little fucker, I'm not being mean to you, you're just too stupid to see. DIRK You don't know what I can do. You don't know what I can do or what I'm gonna do or what I'm gonna be. You don't know. I'm good. I have good things that you don't know and I'm gonna be something -- you -- You Don't Know And You'll See. MOTHER You can't do anything. You'll never do anything -- DIRK Don't be mean to me. MOTHER YOU LITTLE FUCKER, I'M NOT BEING MEAN TO YOU! Dirk CHARGES at his Mother and SLAMS her against the wall. DIRK AND YOU DON'T BE MEAN, AND YOU DON'T TALK TO ME . . . . NO. CUT TO: 29 EXT. DIRK'S HOUSE/TORRANCE - MORNING Dirk CHARGES out of the house and runs off down the street. Mother appears in the doorway, watches him leave, slams the door -- CUT TO: 30 OMITTED 31 OMITTED 32 OMITTED 33 INT. JACK'S HOUSE - DAY Jack, Amber, Rollergirl, Reed, Buck and Becky. They're setting up for a pool party. Cases of beer, soda and chips all around. Dirk comes walking up towards the front door . . . Jack opens up, CAMERA PUSHES IN . . . Jack opens his arms; JACK Eddie Adams from Torrance! You made it, you made it, my darling, come on in here. I want you to meet someone -- CAMERA follows with Jack and Dirk as they move to the pool area and find Reed, who's setting up

clams

How many times the word 'clams' appears in the text?