"BURN AFTER READING" (2008)

BURN AFTER READING

by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

High in the air——so high we an see the curvature of the earth. The eastern seaboard stretches away, flecked with clouds.

As we dissolve in closer the picture bleaches of color.We are looking down at the city of Washington, D.C.

Dissolve closer still: a black-and-white aerial photograph of a neighborhood in suburban D.C. dominated by a sprawling building. Computer type quickly bleeps on:

C.I.A. Headquarters Langley, Virginia

We track at floor level, following the well shined shoes of someone walking down the well polished hallway.

We hear a door opening and a silver-haired man rises behind his desk. A nameplate on the desk identifies him as Palmer DeBakey Smith.

Osbourne Cox, entering, is a middle-aged man in a striped shirt and bow tie.

The two men, sitting on chairs facing the desk, nod at Osbourne, who is surprised to see them.

Palmer jumps in:

A beat.

Another uncomfortable beat.

Stunned silence. Ozzie turns to look at Peck.

At length:

He gropes, uncomfortable.

Palmer nods at Olson.

Osbourne gets to his feet, agitated.

He storms out the door.

The door slams. Palmer Smith looks at Olson. Olson arches an eyebrow.

OSBOURNE

Bow tie loosened, he stands at a kitchen counter.

His shoulders twist as he does something below frame: we hear the crackle of ice cubes wrenching loose from a tray.

Behind him we see the apartment door opening. Katie, an attractive middle-aged woman, enters, taking her key out of the door, but stops, surprised to see Osbourne.

Osbourne continues making himself a drink.

Katie rolls her eyes.

A hand hovers, hesitates.

VOICE Is this a, uh, goat cheese?

Pink Revision 8/14/07 6.

Wider shows the cocktail party, meagerly attended but in full swing. Besides Osbourne and Katie there is Harry Pfarrer (who has just inquired about the cheese), bearded, forties, rugged; his wife Sandy; and a shiny-faced young couple, Doug and Tina Magruder.

Osbourne holds a cocktail tumbler.

Harry looks at him coldly.

He eats a piece, cupping one hand under his mouth.

Katie tries to separate the two men by including Doug Magruder.

Pink Revision 8/14/07 6A.

Pink Revision 8/14/07 7.

HARRY * Used to work for Treasury, but I * didn’t go over to Homeland Security. * I’m with the Marshalls. *

Harry laughs.

Choking on piece of cheese, coughing

They enter.

He looks down at the floor. He stamps.

Harry is looking around the kitchen, taking in the fixtures. Absently:

Harry is staring down at the linoleum again.

A6 EXT. STREET - NIGHT A6

A car drives by.

Harry driving, his wife next to him.

A long beat.

Finally:

Harry shrugs.

Harry opens his mouth to reply, considers, doesn’t.

They drive.

KATIE

She is staring, in front of a mirror, face covered in cold cream, one hand arrested on the way up to daub on more.

Osbourne is buttoning a pajama top.

Katie stares at him in the mirror.

A beat.

She bursts into laughter.

THE BRIDGE

A small yacht. Osbourne stands at the wheel, a light wind in his face, as the boat sails under motor power.

After a beat he moves to the front of the boat.

An old man sits on a bench on the prow facing out into the wind. He has snowy hair and a stern Yankee face. He wears a tweed cap. He doesn’t much react to Osbourne’s approach.

The old man remains silent, staring. Osbourne sits next to him and idly tucks in the plaid blanket resting over the man’s knees.

The old man stares out into the wind.

The old man stares out into the wind.

The old man stares out into the wind.

Osbourne sniffles.

He taps the old man on the knee and rises.

LONG SHOT THRU THE WINDSHIELD OF A CAR

The sailboat docked at the end of a marina. Osbourne is pushing the old man in a wheel chair down the pier away from the boat.

A MAN’S VOICE We’ve seen this...

THE MAN

White hair, bushy eyebrows, a florid face. He is in a law- book lined conference room. He wears an expensive suit, suspenders, a white shirt with blue collar and cuffs.He is Bogus Terikhian.

Wider on the conference room shows that Katie Cox sits at the table, along with Terikhian, another lawyer, and an assistant.

He waggles his hands, groping for the word.

He shrugs.

Osbourne is splayed on an easy chair, wearing a bathrobe over pyjamas. He stares at the ceiling, motionless, arms out- flung, like Marat in his bathtub.

A long still beat. A clock ticks.

Abruptly Osbourne raises one hand to speak into a microcassette recorder.

The thought, such as it was, peters out. Osbourne rises and wanders around the room, glassy-eyed.

He suddenly raises the microcassette again.

He suddenly stops, head cocked, listening.

Faintly, a ringing phone.

At the cut Osbourne is thundering down a steep carpeted stairway. He inclines his head to clear the ceiling that juts over the bottom half of the stairwell.

The phone is louder here.

A semi-finished basement with cheap paneling and a low dropped ceiling of water-stained Johnson-Armstrong tile.The ringing phone is on a cheap government-surplus desk. The answering machine, with Osbourne’s voice, picks up:

Osbourne, robe flapping, shuffles hurriedly in his slippered feet toward the phone.

He eases into the chair, having swiped up the phone. A listening beat.

We are looking over Osbourne’s shoulder——he is still in his robe——as he sits hunched on an ottoman, looking at a daytime game show.

A few beats of the show.

Roaring laughter from the studio audience. Mild chuckle from Osbourne in the foreground.

Ticking clock. Osbourne paces with the microcassette recorder. He raises it with a thought, draws a breath, and then stops, and looks off.

The ticking grandfather clock: ornate hands on an ornate clock face Two or three minutes to five.

Osbourne stares for a long beat.

OSBOURNE

Shoulders twisting as we hear ice clattering out of a tray.

He pours coke sizzling onto the ice.

He pauses for a long beat.

He takes a bottle of rum out of a cabinet.

He pours some into a hatch-marked shot glass.

He looks at it. The amber liquid tops the hatch mark.He conscientiously pours the overage back, murmuring:

He dumps the shot into the Coke.

As before, the boat, docked at the end of the marina pier, is seen in long shot through the windshield of a car.

Closer on the boat. As water laps against pilings and the boat gently bobs and creaks, we hear, muffled, the sounds of a couple having sex. When it builds to climax we cut:

Minutes later. We hold on a door for a quiet beat, then we hear the gurgle of water, and then the door opens. Harry Pfarrer emerges from the small bathroom, buckling his belt.

In the bedroom which he emerges into Katie Cox is just finishing dressing.

Harry looks at his watch.

Katie is letting herself in.

Quiet.

Katie enters and sees a note on the counter paperweighted by a plate of used lime wedges:

Honey,

At Fenninger’s. Reunion committee dinner. See you later.

Long-lens, hand-held, point-of-view seeming: Harry Pfarrer is jogging in his Treasury sweats.

Closer on him. Brow furrows. He spins, jogs backwards, looking.

His point-of-view: nothing unusual; traffic on the bridge, no pedestrians particularly close.

Harry, mildly puzzled, slows and stops. He turns again.

Point-of-view up the bridge: empty.

Harry starts jogging again.

We are tracking toward the desk in the corner, at which Katie sits. She cracks open a CD case and loads the CD into Osbourne’s computer. A suspense drone builds as we track in.

Katie starts typing, then suddenly stops. She holds still, listening for noises in the house. Nothing. She resumes typing.

We hear male voices beginning to swell in song. The voices continue after the suspense drone snaps off, at the cut to:

A musty steakhouse. On the walls are hunting-scene prints and steel engravings of English country houses.

A placard resting on a chair outside the Georgian Room: CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY.

From inside the room, male voices:

A dozen middle-aged men around a long table, each holding high a glass.

The men are sweaty, tie-loosened, dinner-stuffed and boozy.

Close on Osbourne as a rotund middle-aged classmate fills his glass to brimming. The two sway unsteadily with the music..

All swing their glasses side-to-side in rhythm:

Glasses are thrust high with a ringing finish:

A WOMAN’S ASS

Bare. Pale. Middle-aged.

Someone with a marker is drawing on the flesh to illustrate:

The camera is arcing around a standing, naked, middle-aged woman, to reveal the doctor sitting on a stool in the examining room, facing her. He reaches forward again with the marker.

The continuing track around is also booming up to reveal the face of the patient, Linda Litzke.

He marks.

Doctor and patient, now dressed, sit on either side of a desk.

Linda Litzke, in a Hardbodies polo shirt with “Linda” stitched on the breast, leans out of her semi-enclosed office on the gym floor.

Chad Feldheimer, trainer, fortyish and well-muscled, has a gym patron up on a table and is helping him stretch a leg back.

Linda is tapping at her computer as Chad enters.

Chad perches on the desk, chewing gum as he gazes at the screen.

She clicks.

She clicks. Chad is laughing. Linda scowls.

Linda slaps his arm.

Linda is showing someone around the floor.

Chad is working with a medicine ball and a heavy young woman.

Linda is leaning forward at her desk, phone wedged between ear and shoulder, one hand up at her forehead.

After a long still beat:

Another still beat.

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

Listening, then:

Her jaw sets. She controls her fury. Quieter:

We are on a long lens point-of-view, from several cubicles over, of Linda, now slumped at her desk, head in her arms. We faintly hear her sobbing.

Reverse shows Ted Treffon, middle-aged, balding, the soulful manager of Hardbodies. He looks at Linda, puzzled and a little alarmed. He tenses as if to rise but doesn’t, and hovers uncomfortably, unsure of whether to intrude.

Linda walks down the promenade dressed in a smart pant suit.

Her moving POV passes over a couple in conversation, an old woman feeding the birds, a man in a business suit reading a newspaper.

She passes the man and turns around. He has looked up from the paper and is staring at her. He wears aviator-shaped glasses with clear plastic rims. He may have hair plugs.

A poster advertisesTotally Stoked! with Dermot Mulroney and Claire Danes.

On the screen, Dermot Mulroney, dressed in a tuxedo, cranes his head to look steeply up and off.

Linda sits next to Alan in the half-empty theatre, nervously watching the screen.

Linda laughs raucously, then catches herself and looks at Alan.

The couple sit across from each other at a small table. They pick at their food.

The couple are making love in the dark room on a frilly comforter. Alan, still wearing his glasses, wheezes asthmatically.

Alan is snoring. After a long beat Linda gets up and puts on a robe. She bends down near the bed and picks something up out of Alan’s trousers.

She sits into a chair near the window in the dark room and opens Alan’s wallet. A Discover card, driver’s license, a condom. A photograph of Alan holding a large bluefish.

She unfolds a piece of notepaper. Written in a feminine hand in pencil:

Please pick up: Plunge Honey Nut Cheerios.

She catches herself, looks around.

The snoring, off, continues.

She looks out the window.

The lights of the freeway twinkle.

We are in the bedroom. The boat rides gently at anchor.

Harry has an arm around Katie, in bed. Both stare at a point in space.

After a beat that is silent except for the faint sloshing of water against hull:

Harry doesn’t react——a careful, studied non-reaction.After more sloshing:

Awkward beat. The sloshing of waves. Harry nods.

Harry Pfarrer pulls a length of metal tubing from a shelf. He sights down it, examines the gauge, hefts it.

He slides it back in and pulls a length, wider gauge, from the shelf below.

Long lens, hand-held, point-of-view seeming: Harry is pushing a red shopping cart through the parking lot. Standing in the cart are lengths of metal tubing that he steadies with one hand as he pushes.

Linda has a hand cupped to her forehead and the phone pressed to one ear.

After a short beat she hits a button on the phone console and cradles the handset. From the speaker we hear:

Music.

Linda listens for a moment, then abruptly lifts the handset and slams it back down.

TRACKING IN ON TED’S CUBICLE

Ted Treffon, the soulful manager of Hardbodies, stands with one hand on the back of his chair——which Chad occupies——and one hand on the desktop, looking over Chad’s shoulder at a computer screen that Chad is scrolling down. Standing behind both men is a short Mexican Indian man, also in a Hardbodies uniform.

Ted continues to stare at the computer screen in mounting alarm. He responds absently to Linda:

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 31.

She is looking at the screen.

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 32.

As he backs out of the office:

Chad swivels around.

He zippers his lip.

CLOSE ON A REAR-VIEW MIRROR

A dark blue Ford Taurus, three or four car lengths back on a quiet Chevy Chase street.

Harry Pfarrer glances at the rear view mirror. Behind him we see the steel pipe from Home Depot laying across the top of the back seat of the station wagon.

Harry is just getting out of the wagon which is parked in the driveway of the suburban house.

Harry is struggling through the front door with the length of pipe.

We hear his wife call down from upstairs:

He takes the pipe, opens the staircase door to the cellar, sets the pipe inside on the upper stair, and closes the door behind him.

Harry is at a workbench welding a length of trimmed pipe to a short piece of hardware clamped in a table vise.

His home shop is in a caged-off section of the basement. There is also haphazard storage.

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 34.

One shelf holds stacked boxes labeled with magic marker: “Oliver in the Oval Office,” “Yea and Nay for Oliver,” “Point of Order, Oliver!”

Harry loosens the vise and takes out the piece of hardware. He drops it, a small bearing-mounted clip, onto a length of pipe held horizontal in another vise. He experimentally slides the clip along the length of pipe: it slides smoothly back and forth, nicely balanced.

Linda Litzke and Ted Treffon, the soulful manager of Hardbodies, are at a table in the yuppie bar Monkey Dave’s. To a waitress:

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 35.

He looks at her, appraising. He decides.

He reaches into his wallet. He pulls out a picture:

A snapshot of a soulful man in a dark robe and a high caftan standing on a curb in front of a large stone building.

Linda shrieks:

Ted nods gravely.

He looks at the picture for a sad beat, then shrugs. He stuffs it back in his wallet.

It is night. Linda sleeps in a darkened bedroom under the frilly comforter. We hear a distant banging. Finally the banging stops and a moment later the telephone rings.

Linda stirs, wakes and reaches for the bedside phone.

She removes an appliance from her mouth.

We hear a door being buzzed open. At the top of the staircase an apartment door opens and Linda appears in a robe.

Her POV down the steep staircase: Chad Feldheimer is walking up towards the landing dressed in a black lycra bicycle unitard with lime green flames. He holds a bike wheel in one hand and a plastic squirt bottle in the other.

He looks up, foreshortened.

Chad enters with his bicycle wheel and squirt bottle.Linda shuts the door behind him.

He leans his wheel against the wall and sits on a low chair that brings his knees up near his chin. He looks smugly at Linda.

A beat. Chad stares.

He rises and heads for the kitchen.

Chad opens the refrigerator and starts rummaging.

Chad straightens up with a bottle of orange juice which he rolls across his forehead.

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 40.

Chad is looking at a crumpled piece of notepaper and punching numbers into a wall phone. In the background we see Linda watching him from the living room couch.

A beat.

We hear the call ring through.

The click of the connection being made, and Chad silently gestures, with an upward sweep of his hand, for Linda to pick up her extension.

He has the phone pressed groggily to his ear.

A beat.

Katie stirs in bed.

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 42.

She slams down the phone.

He walks back into the living room shaking his head.

Osbourne sits on the edge of his bed in the dark room, shaking his head.

Chad paces, shaking his head.

Blue Revision 8/1/07 45.

SANDY PFARRER

We are dutch on her as she leans down a staircase, one hand on its rail, calling to be heard over the buzz of a bandsaw:

No answer. The bandsaw whines higher, cutting through steel. Louder:

Blue Revision 8/1/07 46.

The whine hums down.

HARRY’S VOICE Huh?

Her point-of-view: down the stairs, oddly cropped by the angles of dropped ceiling and walls, we see Harry’s lower body as he throws a drape over his project. He emerges from the shop cage and closes its mesh door and padlocks it.

He comes up the stairs, pushing goggles onto his forehead.

At the top of the stairs he kisses her.

He picks up her bag and they go out.

They are walking to a black Town Car idling curbside.

Pink Revision 8/14/07 47.

He kisses her.

He slams the car door after her. As the car pulls out his look travels with it and then lingers up the street, caught on:

A Ford Taurus, parked, dark.

Harry hesitates, then starts walking up the street towards the parked car.

When he has taken several steps the ignition is turned in the car. A shape briefly visible in the driver’s seat is lost when the headlights flash on. The car pulls out from the curb into a U-turn and drives away.

Harry watches the tail lights recede.

CLOSE ON A THUMB AND FINGER

Twisting a gold cufflink like a worry bead. Wider shows the attorney Bogus Terikhian at a conference table in a book- lined room.

He leans forward and presses a button on his phone console.

Pink Revision 8/14/07 48.

The secretary rummages through a gym bag that has the Hardbodies logo. There are gym clothes among the odds and ends. She picks up her handset.

Bogus is leaning back, expansive.

He projects toward the phone:

BACK TO KATIE:

Linda walks down the promenade, dressed in a smart pant suit.

Her moving POV passes over people relaxing in the park: a mother with a stroller, kids running with a ball. Her look settles on the bench that formerly held her first date, now occupied by:

A man spitting sunflower seeds. Harry Pfarrer.

The point-of-view arcs past him as Linda gives him the once- over.

She doubles back.

Harry and Linda eat with appetite as they talk.

Harry talks into his sleeve-cuff as if into a radio transmitter:

Linda cackles.

Pink Revision 8/14/07 50.

Linda cackles again; Harry smiles.

He reaches but hesitates.

He spears a dumpling: *

Through a mouthful: *

Linda cackles.

Pink Revision 8/14/07 50A.

Pink Revision 8/14/07 51.

He stabs another dumpling off Linda’s plate. *

Linda swings the door open, leading Harry in.

Harry talks as he looks appraisingly around the apartment.

He is evaluating the place. He stamps on the floor.

Harry is taking off his coat.

He holds up both hands and waggles the fingers.

Linda cackles.

As Linda passes he grabs and embraces her. Linda reacts to his gun in the shoulder holster:

TED TREFFON

The soulful manager of Hardbodies.

Wider shows Linda in the manager’s cubicle.

A rattling knock. Linda looks over:

Chad Feldheimer, in his trainer’s polo shirt, is knocking on the cubicle window. He gestures urgently for her to come out.

Behind Hardbodies. Linda and Chad emerge from the health club through a heavy back door.

Harry and Katie are at a downtown D.C. restaurant in the middle of lunch.

Katie looks at Harry, reckoning. He returns her look with an open one.

She nods, thinking, still gazing at him. Her cell phone chirps and she reaches into her purse.

She flips open the phone.

She looks at her watch, rises.

Harry rises to kiss her.

CLOSE ON A WATCH

Showing 2:20.

Wider shows Osbourne Cox, sitting in a car parked on a downtown street, consulting his watch.

He looks up, irritated, and glances around. His look is arrested by:

The side-view mirror. It shows a man approaching on bicycle along the sidewalk wearing a suit and a bike helmet. The man dismounts several paces behind the parked car, locks his bike to a fence separating the sidewalk from a small park, and takes off his helmet. It is Chad.

He walks along the sidewalk to the car, opens the passenger door and sits in with his bike helmet clamped under one arm.

Chad chuckles.

Osbourne has punched him in the nose.

Chad stares at him, stunned.

His nose starts bleeding.

He opens the car door and gets out, hand to his nose.

He slams the door.

As Chad goes over to his bike Osbourne leans across the front seat and cranks down the passenger window to bellow:

He pulls out.

There is the honk of a car horn——not Osbourne’s.

Chad looks, surprised. Linda is pulling up. Her passenger window rolls down.

Chad does.

He is thrown back against the seat as Linda floors it. Recovering:

Linda is coming up fast behind Osbourne’s car in traffic.

The crash of impact——ramming Osbourne.

He recoils from the impact.

A72 HIS CAR-TO-CAR POV A72

The follow car is speeding up again——but it doesn’t hit him. It swerves out, screeching, to pass, and Linda angrily flips him the finger as she speeds by.

Chad is chuckling. Suddenly he sobers.

Linda’s jaw is set. The car is ripping through traffic.

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 59.

A skidding turn sends his weight against the door, and the car lurches to a halt.

A73 INT. LINDA’S CAR/EXT. RUSSIAN EMBASSY - DAY A73

CHAD’S POV THRU WINDSHIELD

The hulking embassy building.

Linda stands before a reception desk. Chad is just behind her, his shirt front spotted with blood and his head tipped back with one hand pressing a hankie to his nose. His bike helmet is clamped under his other arm.

Linda and Chad sit in, Chad with a moistened hand-towel now pressed to his nose.

Behind the desk sits a sixtyish Russian functionary with the beetle-browed sphynx-like look of the Brezhnev-era bureaucrat. This is Krapotkin.

She trails off, nodding encouragingly at Krapotkin. Krapotkin looks blankly back.

A long beat.

She rummages in her handbag and pulls out the diskette. She holds it aloft, waggling it for Krapotkin.

Krapotkin stares.

Linda sets the diskette on the table and slides it across.

After a beat of looking at the proffered diskette, Krapotkin leans forward to take it. Linda smiles. Krapotkin turns the diskette over a couple of times, looks sadly up.

Linda slowly shakes her head, eyes locked on Krapotkin.

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 61.

A large drop of blood has gathered at the tip of Chad’s nose. It now drops onto his shirt.

Silence.

Finally:

He rises.

She looks anxiously at her watch.

Krapotkin leaves.

When the door closes behind him:

CHAD * What? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he seems cool.

A long beat. Linda looks at her watch.

Chad sighs.

Chad is slumped back with his head tilted back. Linda looks at her watch.

The door opens. A man in a suit:

The three people——Linda, Chad, the man in the suit——walking. Linda gazes around; Chad has his head mostly back.

Vladimir Putin glares down from a framed photograph on the wall. Chad and Linda are sitting before yet another man, even blander than the first.

Linda makes a pantomime of zipping her lip.

The man looks at her impassively.

The Russian’s focus shifts to the man with the bloody nose:

The man stares at him. A beat.

The man’s look swings back to the woman for another staring beat.

At length:

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 63.

A beat.

Linda holds up her watch and taps at it:

The man sighs.

Beat.

TED TREFFON

Point-of-view from a car pulling into Hardbodies. Ted Treffon, the soulful manager, stands on the sidewalk in front of the gym, squinting into the approaching car, his arms out to either side, palms up: what the hell is going on?

Minutes later.

A considering beat.

Ted looks at her dolefully.

Blue Revision 8/1/07 65.

He shakes his head.

The car is parked in the driveway of the Cox townhouse, its back crumpled.

Reverse shows Katie, looking at it, furious, her jaw set.

Katie marches in the door.

Silence.

Katie enters.

Osbourne, lightly sheened by sweat, is in the easy chair in his robe, his microcassette recorder under the hand splayed across his chest. Amber fluid puddles a glass on the side table. Osbourne snores softly.

Katie’s fury mounts. She visibly fights it down.

In Harry Pfarrer’s house. Harry stands before the mirror humming as he meticulously trims his eyebrow hair with a Hoffritz scissors.

We hear his phone ringing, then the answering machine:

HARRY’S VOICE Sandy and I aren’t here to take your call. Please leave a message.

Blue Revision 8/1/07 66.

After a beep:

KATIE’S VOICE Can I see you please. Harry, please call me. I’m very upset.

Harry continues to hum, trimming his eyebrows. The machine beeps off.

Harry walks into the living room. He takes some as-yet- unfolded packing boxes and strews them with studied randomness across the floor. As he does so we hear a cell phone chirp.

Harry fishes the phone out of his pocket and holds it at arm’s length, squinting at the number. Still humming, he stuffs the phone back in his pocket.

Linda meets Harry with a kiss.

He is escorting to a movie theater entrance.

Our follow-move brings in a light box displaying the one- sheet for Totally Stoked! with Dermot Mulroney and Claire Danes.

As they tail out of frame:

On the screen, Dermot Mulroney, dressed in a tuxedo, cranes his head to look steeply up and off.

Along with Linda, Harry laughs raucously, tossing popcorn into his mouth.

The door swings in and Harry and Linda enter. Harry refers to the boxes littering the floor:

The overhead light is switched on.

As Harry and Linda come down the stairs:

He sweeps the drop-cloth off his project.

It looks like a rowing machine, though with a higher seat. Its function is obscure.

He pushes the seat with his foot. It slides forward then back, forward and back, rocking. On its forward arc a dildo emerges from the center of the seat’s pipe-track, angled toward the seat-bottom which is cleft to accommodate its entrance.

A long beat as the seat squeaks back and forth, the dildo rhythmically bobbing up and down.

At length:

Another couple of cycles.

Both stare at the rocking love seat:

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

CLOSE ON OSBOURNE

Sitting in a bar booth, staring, incredulous.

Across from him, a man of Osbourne’s age.

Osbourne stares.

The man responds only with a shrug and a commiserating head- shake.

Osbourne struggles to compose himself.

He leans in, voice lowered.

Osbourne looks.

There are two men with drinks at a booth. At Osbourne’s look one of them, who has been staring, looks hastily away.

The man meets his look again. He smiles, rises, ambles over.

Osbourne extends a hand.

He smiles as he deposits a large manila envelope in Osbourne’s extended hand.

He nods toward his companion, watching from the booth.

The man walks off; his friend hastily knocks back the rest of his drink and rises to follow him.

Osbourne stares stupidly at the envelope in his hand.

THRU A WINDSHIELD

Night. Rain.

The car corners into a driveway and its headlights rake the front of the Cox townhouse, which is dark. A couple of pieces of luggage and several cardboard boxes are stacked on the stoop, most of them protected from the rain by the eave but some not.

OSBOURNE’S VOICE What the fuck?

OUTSIDE

The car stops. Osbourne emerges, runs through the rain to the front stoop. Rain drums against cardboard.

He puts his key in the lock and——it doesn’t turn.

He nudges a cardboard box with his toe.

He looks up at the dark house, squinting against the rain.

Linda and Chad sit at the counter, Linda drinking a large protein shake, Chad idly twirling a straw wrapper around one finger.

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 72.

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 73.

LONG LENS POINT-OF-VIEW

A car is pulling into the driveway. Katie Cox emerges from the driver’s side.

Reverse shows Chad, in his suit, watching from a parked car across the street.

Now Harry Pfarrer emerges from the passenger side wearing a brown pin-striped suit. Encumbered by something bulky he follows Katie up the walk.

It seems to be some kind of pillow or cushion under his arm, but very large, and wedge-shaped. Katie is letting herself in; Harry gives a furtive glance around——as Chad sinks back in his car seat——before entering with the wedge-cushion.

The door closes.

Chad relaxes, straightens up. A beat. He looks idly around. He notices:

Another car, parked on the same side of the street, further up. Someone is just straightening from a slouch to become visible over the driver’s headrest.

Chad looks, puzzled.

Chad is sucking the dregs of his Jamba Juice up a straw when a noise brings his look around:

The door to the townhouse is opening. Katie emerges, in a change of clothes. Harry follows in sweats.

They get into her car. It pulls out.

Chad watches it go up the street. He is about to open his door but pauses, seeing:

The parked car up the street. Katie’s car having passed, it now pulls out and follows at a discreet distance. Both cars disappear.

Chad opens his door and gets out. He is crossing to the townhouse when he notices another car parked on the other side of the street. A man sits in the driver’s seat, smoking.

Chad proceeds on to the house. There is a barred garden- level door tucked under the stoop. Chad checks out the caging on the door. He looks up the façade of the house.

It pulls over at one end of the Potomac bridge that we have seen before. Harry emerges.

The car squeals away, leaving Harry on the shoulder.

Chad is cornering the house on the driveway side, appraising. A low wall separates driveway from back garden. Chad gives a quick glance around.

Chad vaults the wall to land in the garden.

The garden steps down to a back door. Chad checks out the windows in back, then goes to the door. It is locked. It has a large window.

We can see Chad’s form outside the door. Its pane is tapped once... twice... it breaks.

HARRY JOGGING

He spins, jogs backward.

His point-of-view: a car, traveling slowly. Following?

Harry cuts across a park lawn.

Chad is nosing around the basement. He notices Ozzie’s office set-up.

HARRY

Emerging from the park onto another street. He looks around and, satisfied that he has lost the tail, jogs on.

Chad is looking at the screen of Ozzie’s computer.

He fishes a CD out of his suit pocket, feeds it into the computer.

HARRY

Jogging, entering a residential area.

Chad is emerging from the basement. He is looking idly around, heading toward the front door when a shape materializes in its frosted glass sidelight.

Chad freezes.

There is scraping at the lock.

Chad quickly mounts the stairs.

Chad freezes, listening.

The downstairs door swings open, shut.

Footsteps.

A tread on the stairs: Chad scurries into the first open door.

Chad hotfoots into a closet and eases its door most of the way shut. The footsteps mount the stairs. Chad peeks out.

His POV: The bed, bedclothes rumpled. In the middle of the bed, a wedge-cushion.

Beyond, the open bedroom door shows a slice of hallway and stairs. Harry arrives at the top of the stairs. He nudges back a drape on the window at the top of the steps. He looks down one way, then the other. He lets the drape fall back and seems to relax.

Harry enters the bedroom. He strips off his shirt and steps out of his pants on his way into the bathroom off the master bedroom. He leaves the door open.

Chad reaches gingerly for the closet door to close it but stops abruptly as we hear the shower turned off and the curtain whipped back. Harry emerges from the shower. He rinses off, humming “Born Free,” and walks into the foreground pulling on shorts and shirt and a pair of dress pants that was draped across a bureau.

Chad shrinks back into the closet as Harry approaches.Harry stops, just outside the cracked door.

Through the crack we see only the white of his shirt. Abruptly Harry turns his back to us and recedes into the room and bends to pick something off the floor.

Chad leans in ever so slightly to see, but draws back again as Harry approaches.

Chad looks over to his right: on a hanger, the brown pinstripe coat that matches Harry’s pants.

The closet door is thrown open.

Harry jerks up the gun which he’s pulled from the shoulder holster in his other hand and——BAM——shoots Chad in the face.

The gun bucks. Unused to the recoil and still screaming, Harry staggers back and trips over the edge of the bed and drops the weapon.

He crabs briefly backward and then flips over and scrambles off on all fours. In the hallway he rises and tramples down the stairs.

He stops at the bottom of the steps, panting. He looks back up the steps, trying to control his heavy breathing so that he can listen.

A long silence.

No answer.

He looks around.

Harry enters. He opens a drawer, closes it, opens another.

Harry enters from the kitchen and starts slowly mounting the stairs, a chopping knife in one hand.

Harry tops the stairs. He pauses, looking at:

The bedroom door, ajar.

Inside, his gun lies on the floor.

Harry takes cautious steps toward the door.

He pauses at the cracked door. Suddenly:

He plunges through the door and runs for the gun and scoops it, dropping the knife.

He stands and spins, panting.

His point-of-view: the closet. Its door ajar. Legs protrude into the room as if Chad, hidden within, is sitting with his back against the closet wall contemplating his next move.

Harry walks cautiously over. With a bare foot he experimentally waggles one of Chad’s feet. Limp.

Harry nudges the door.

It creaks fully open.

Chad’s face is a powder-burned, chewed-up mess.

He gingerly crouches down.

He tries to avert his eyes as he feels in Chad’s suit pockets.

He comes away with a wallet and hastily stands.

Inside are a few dollars and nothing else: no credit cards, driver’s license; empty.

He leans back in, trying not to look, but for some reason feeling obliged to return the wallet.

As he opens the suit coat to slip it back in the inside pocket he notices:

The suit label has been cut away. He fingers the raveled fringe.

He straightens up again.

He gazes down at the body.

We track at floor level, following the well shined shoes of someone walking down the well polished hallway.

We are low, outside an office door. The shoes enter frame and the door is swung inward, away from us, to show Palmer DeBakey Smith seated behind his desk.

He looks up.

The door slams shut.

Some time later. Our camera position is higher.

At the cut the door swings open and Palmer Smith strides out, grim-faced.

Tracking behind his shoes down a different piece of hallway.

Palmer Smith’s back enters and he swings the door open.A silver-haired man looks up from his desk where he is leaned back, eating orange sections off a paper towel on the desktop.

He seats himself facing the desk. A desktop nameplate identifies his superior as Gardner McC. Chubb.

Palmer hands a folder across, grimacing.

Palmer shakes his head.

Gardner Chubb is flipping bemusedly through the contents of the folder.

He reaches the folder back to Palmer.

A HOPPING MAN IN A UNITARD

His hands are on his hips. He is darkly Mediterranean and very fit. He smiles into the camera as he hops in time to upbeat music, kicking a leg out on each beat.

Wider shows that the man is on TV leading the viewer in exercise. The viewer, in this case, is Osbourne Cox, on his boat.

He follows along in his underwear in the cramped quarters belowdecks. Boxes and luggage are strewn about, half- unpacked.

He pants as he exercises:

LINDA

We are on a long lens point-of-view, from several cubicles over, of Linda slumped at her desk, head in her arms.We faintly hear her sobbing.

Reverse shows Ted Treffon, the soulful manager of Hardbodies, looking at her, unsettled.

CLOSE ON LINDA

We are in her cubicle now, her weeping bumping up at the cut.

A tap against the cubicle window brings her head up.

Ted Treffon opens the door.

He sits at the chair alongside her desk.

Ted sighs.

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 86.

Linda looks at Ted for a beat, thinking.

She takes his hand.

Ted swallows. He looks down.

Linda still has his hand. He tries to cover his reaction to the physical contact.

The phone beeps. A voice comes through the intercom:

VOICE Linda, there’s a Mr. Krapotkin on line * two.

She punches a button on the phone.

VOICE Linda?

Yellow Revision 8/24/07 87.

VOICE This is Ilan Krapotkin. Russian embassy. Returning your call.

Looking at her, Ted sighs. He shakes his head sadly, rises and goes. Linda pushes the door of the cubicle shut with her foot.

Beat.

Another beat.

Blue Revision 8/1/07 88.

Linda glances up. Outside her cubicle window Ted waits; at Linda’s look he turns palms up: What’s going on? Linda holds up a finger: one second.

Harry Pfarrer stands at the kitchen counter chopping carrots. He is intensely focused and chops very, very quickly, producing slices in high volume.

Reverse shows Katie Cox in a chair in the living room, frozen in a look up, a file of papers forgotten in one hand as she gazes over half-glasses at Harry. His chopping continues unabated.

After a long look and much chopping:

The chopping continues.

Katie’s eyes shift down to the countertop, back up to Harry. Another beat.

The chopping stops.

Harry slaps the knife down. He stares at Katie, jaw grinding, for a beat.

Through grit teeth:

Katie, unused to backtalk from Harry, is stunned. She returns in a manner as hard as his:

Her fingers form quotes:

Harry glares at her, vibrating with rage. Her look at him is equally hard.

Harry abruptly turns and stomps up the stairs.

Brief tromping on the second floor. Katie sits in puzzled suspense.

Footfalls descend the staircase.

Blue Revision 8/1/07 90.

Harry reappears at the foot of the stairs with his wedge- cushion tucked under an arm. He flings the front door open, goes out, slams it shut.

Harry stomps to his car in the driveway and flings in the cushion. He gets in, seething. After a beat he pulls out his cell phone and dials.

A ring. Pick-up. A female voice:

A beat.

Harry sags.

Blue Revision 8/1/07 91.

He folds the phone, miserable.

As he pockets it his attention is caught by something in the side-view mirror:

The car parked across the street. A man’s shape in the driver’s seat.

Harry, jaw set, gets out of the car and starts down the drive.

The parked car starts.

The car tries to pull out but is closely hemmed in by cars front and back; it will need a couple moves.

Harry runs back to his own car, starts it, throws it into reverse and backs straight down the drive toward the frantically shuttling car.

He t-bones it.

Harry, amped, throws his car into drive, pulls halfway up the driveway.

He again throws the car into reverse.

The man in the other car abandons his attempt to pull out and scrambles frantically toward the passenger side.

Harry again smashes into the car.

Blue Revision 8/1/07 92.

The other man emerges from the far side. He flees down the sidewalk as fast as his weight will permit, pocket change jingling, yelling as he runs:

Harry runs after him, calling:

Pounding footsteps.

The overweight man does not have Harry’s stamina: Harry closes, leaps, and tackles.

He crawls up the man’s body, hand-over-hand, panting:

The other man is panting much harder:

This stops Harry. He isn’t sure what he’s heard.

Harry stares at the man underneath him. The gasping man explains:

Harry is blindsided. He stares. He slowly sits up, digesting:

The freed Tuchman Marsh man also sits up, still panting heavily.

Harry rises and walks stiffly, zombie-like, up the street. The man watches him go.

After a few paces Harry stops and sits on the curb. He starts weeping.

The man, still breathing heavily, calls out:

Harry’s cell phone chirps. He fishes it out and unfolds it, sniveling.

VOICE Harry, it’s Osbourne Cox.

Harry stares, trying to fit this in. Osbourne prompts, after a silent beat:

VOICE (CONT’D) ... Harry?

Harry again stares: maybe he has this figured wrong.

After a silence:

Echoing up the street:

Blue Revision 8/1/07 95.

Osbourne paces the cramped cabin belowdecks, a phone to his ear. He is unshaven, wearing a robe.

Filtered rings, then a connection:

SANDY’S VOICE Hello?

A long beat.

Disconnect.

Osbourne yanks the rubber band off a bundle of mail.

Two pairs of footsteps echo down a long hallway as Linda Litzke is escorted by a solemn Russian staffer.

A waiting room. A long beat; Linda sits waiting.

A door opens. Mr. Krapotkin emerges.

Linda stands to go to the inner office but Krapotkin motions her back down.

Linda is dumbfounded.

A silent beat.

Krapotkin fishes something from his pocket.

Krapotkin stands with the disk extended toward her.

Linda recovers from her astonishment and is moved to outrage:

Blue Revision 8/1/07 98.

Looking the opposite way.

We hear two pairs of footsteps. They approach for several beats and then Linda and her escort enter frame and recede, footsteps echoing. The staffer’s hand is on Linda’s elbow.

As we hold on their backs and they continue to walk, Linda jerks her arm away; the staffer regrabs it. She jerks away again.

126 OMITTED 126 *

127 OMITTED 127 *

An exercise show plays on the TV, unwatched. Osbourne sits at a little table looking at a notice torn from a windowed envelope.

He brings the notice close, squints at it.

He quickly shuffles through the rest of the mail, pulls out another envelope, rips it open.

Blue Revision 8/1/07 99.

A MINUTE LATER

Osbourne paces, drink in hand, staring at another piece of mail.

A MINUTE LATER

Osbourne is back at the table, drink half-consumed, listening at the phone.

A129 EXT. PFARRERS’ CHEVY CHASE HOUSE - DUSK (FORMERLY SCENE 126)A129 *

We are looking at the exterior of the house in wide shot. * Peaceful neighborhood. Birds chirp. *

From inside the house, though, we can faintly hear sobs, * punctuated by sounds of exertion. Each gasp of effort ends * in a dull clang. *

B129 INT. PFARRER BASEMENT - NIGHT (FORMERLY SCENE 127) B129 *

The wracking sobs bump up loud at the cut inside. *

Harry is weeping as he demolishes the love seat with a * sledgehammer. *

Blue Revision 8/1/07 99A.

Ted stares, horrified.

After a beat:

She sits opposite him in his office. Ted shakes his head.

Blue Revision 8/1/07 101.

Weeping, she storms out.

Ted stares, shell-shocked.

In close shot, Ted sits onto a bar stool.

Dim bar, tinkling piano.

BARTENDER’S VOICE What’ll it be.

Ted stares straight ahead. A long beat.

He finally focuses on the bartender, off. He swallows.

Another beat.

Night. Linda is asleep in her bedroom. The buzz of the in- house intercom.

Linda stirs, wakes and reaches for the bedside phone.

She removes an appliance from her mouth.

Minutes later. Harry is gazing off, slack-jawed, haunted.

After a beat:

The thought drifts off. A sad shake of the head.

Linda enters, handing him a drink. She sits opposite.

Harry looks up, surprised.

He catches himself. His gaze wanders back to the haunted, empty spot.

Linda starts quietly weeping.

This focuses Harry’s attention. He looks at her as if just now noticing her.

Harry moves next to her and puts an arm around her.

He squeezes her shoulder, takes a gulp of the drink.

Harry squeezes her shoulder again.

AN EPIGLOTTIS

Illuminated by a small light. It quavers. The tongue starts to rise and the mouth starts to close.

WOMAN’S VOICE No, stay open...

Wider: a pediatric examining room decorated with colorful prints of cartoon characters and clowns.

Katie Cox, in a white smock, has a tongue depressor in a five- year-old’s mouth and a light-sight in one hand. She withdraws both as the child finishes closing his mouth.The child’s mother stands by.

Katie grasps the child by the upper arm.

WOMAN’S VOICE (CONT’D) ... You have to let the doctor look in your mouth.

The child keeps his lips pressed together.

WOMAN’S VOICE (CONT’D) ... Now you listen to me, young man. You do as I say or I’ll ask your mother to leave the doctor’s office and the two of us will sort out what’s what.

The child looks at her fearfully.

The wall phone bleeps.

Katie rolls to it on her castored chair.

WOMAN’S VOICE (CONT’D) ... Yes.

She listens briefly.

WOMAN’S VOICE (CONT’D) ... With a patient.

She hangs up.

Osbourne, in dressing gown and pyjamas, is barking into the phone:

He slams down the phone.

The hatch is thrown open and Osbourne emerges from below. There is a large built-in toolbox just by the hatch. He yanks it open and pulls out a hatchet.

136 DOCK 136

Osbourne strides grimly down the dock in his bathrobe, hatchet in hand.

Sandy Pfarrer is sitting in an armchair on a morning show living room set surrounded by a dozen eight-year-olds sitting on the carpet. Hosts Del and Connie sit next to her in swivel chairs.

He is holding the book open, face out on his lap.

Del and Connie and Sandy all wear smiles that stay fixed a beat too long. Then Del relaxes and turns to Sandy.

She gives them a cold smile as a technician finishes unclipping her lavaliere and she leaves.

Connie looks at Del and mouths “Bitch.”

Osbourne’s crumple-backed car roars up. It cuts a corner of the lawn and squeals to a halt in the drive. Osbourne emerges, still in robe and pyjamas, with the hatchet.

He goes to the front door and bashes at the knob with the blunt end of the hatchet.

Hardware starts to fall off and jangle onto the stoop. Osbourne tries the sharp end of the hatchet a couple times, decides he prefers the blunt end.

More things fall off. The knob wobbles in the door.

Osbourne pushes the door open.

Sandy Pfarrer is accompanied by a bright young PR woman.

Sandy, entered her dressing room, is already shutting the door on her.

Inside a man lounges reading a magazine. He looks a little like Harry but younger.

The man rises and kisses her.

Osbourne opens a cabinet, muttering:

He takes out liquor bottles and starts putting them in a packing case on the kitchen counter.

People sit on benches eating lunches. Harry Pfarrer is on the bench where he and Linda met, once again spitting sunflower seeds.

Linda walks up. They greet each other with a kiss.

Harry does indeed seem more like his old self.

Linda is shocked but secretly pleased:

Linda chimes in:

Linda and Harry

Harry reaches for Linda and she slides closer. He puts an arm around her.

The thought drifts away as his gaze fixes on something.With his look still fixed:

Linda follows his look.

On a bench a short distance away a middle-aged man with aviator glasses and hair plugs is staring at them.

A slightly overweight woman stops tentatively in front of the man in the aviator glasses and they start to talk.

Linda turns to Harry.

Relaxing now that he sees the man in aviator glasses engaged in conversation, Harry warms to his theme.

Harry has stopped chewing. He is staring at her.

Linda feels obliged to fill the silence.

Harry stares. Linda doesn’t know what to make of his fixed stare.

Harry is beginning to look sick.

A long silence.

Then, quietly:

Now Linda stares, unsure of what to make of the question.

Linda’s eyes widen. She is a little frightened.

People nearby turn to look. It is a scene.

Harry reaches up. He grabs her by the shoulders and shakes.

Linda is at sea. She answers in a small voice:

Harry stares at her.

A long beat.

He leaps to his feet and looks around in a panic.

His point-of-view, sweeping the park. Nearby, the man with plugs, though talking with his date, is looking at him again. Farther away, a man sits in a curbside sedan. Watching? Hard to say.

Harry turns and runs. Linda gapes.

Osbourne sets the packing box heavily down on a bureau in the upstairs bedroom. The box is a third loaded up with liquor bottles. It also holds a mixed drink which Osbourne now takes out. The ice cubes clink as he sips, poking through things in the bureau.

One drawer holds scarves and accessories and a large case. He opens the case and starts dumping jewelry from it into the cardboard box.

Suddenly:

He yanks his hand back and shakes it. He looks at the ball of his thumb. He sucks it.

He carefully picks a brooch out of the jewelry case and flings it across the room.

He resumes dumping jewelry into his box.

He suddenly stops:

A faint knock. The front door.

Osbourne waits.

The knock repeats.

Another beat.

The front door creaks open.

Osbourne carefully sets down his drink. He steps quietly to the closet and pulls a small cedar chest off a high shelf.

Linda flings open the door to her car parked on the street bordering the mall. She gets in and turns the ignition.

Pulling into traffic she checks her rear-view, and her look snags on:

A dark four-door sedan pulling out a few cars back. It falls in behind her. Its driver is a man in sunglasses. He reaches up and touches fingertips to one ear.

Linda frowns. She looks forward, glances again at the mirror.

Another dark car pulls into the lane next to the first.Its driver is also a man in sunglasses.

Downstairs, Osbourne rounds the corner from entryway to living room, a handgun at the ready. His drink is in his other hand. Ice cubes clink as he moves.

The living room is empty.

Osbourne advances cautiously. A quick sidelong look at the kitchen.

Empty.

He proceeds to the basement door.

LINDA DRIVING

She gives worried glances at her rear-view.

The light ahead turns yellow, red.

Cars ahead stop. Linda stops.

A rhythmic thudding sound. It almost makes her car vibrate.

She looks around. She rolls down her window, sticks her head out, looks up.

A black helicopter hovers overhead, rotors thudding. A black- clad body leans partway out. The person seems to be looking down.

Linda draws her head back in.

Osbourne is slowly descending the stairs, gun and drink in either hand, gun up, ice cubes clinking.

The basement comes slowly into view.

Someone stands behind his desk, at the computer.

Osbourne descends further. He stops on the bottom step and stares at Ted Treffon, the soulful manager of Hardbodies. Ted stares at him.

A long silence between the two men.

Then, quietly:

Silence.

Osbourne takes the last step down. He advances slowly, gun trained on Ted.

Osbourne’s look, holding on Ted, changes.

Ted licks his lips.

Ted shakes his head.

BANG.

Ted is shot in the upper chest.

He grabs a three-hole punch from the desktop and flings it at Osbourne and charges.

BANG——another shot goes off.

Ted barrels into Osbourne, knocking him over——

——and goes on past him, lumbering up the stairs.

Osbourne gets to his feet.

Pink Revision 8/14/07 116.

Ted staggers out of the house, a hand pressed to his chest. He has reached the front lawn when Osbourne emerges, robe flapping, pursuing with the hatchet.

He quickly catches up to Ted and whacks at him.

Osbourne whacks him down. He keeps whacking at him.

Gardner Chubb is behind his desk.

Palmer DeBakey Smith is seated across from him. He freezes.

A beat.

Gardner Chubb rubs his forehead.

Gardner Chubb is weary.

Gardner Chubb grimaces.

He shakes his head.

We pull back from Gardner Chubb, shaking his head.

We pull up, back through the clouds, away.