"THE FRENCH DISPATCH OF THE LIBERTY, KANSAS EVENING SUN" (2021)

THE FRENCH DISPATCH

OF THE LIBERTY, KANSAS EVENING SUN

Screenplay By

WES ANDERSON

Story By

WES ANDERSON

ROMAN COPPOLA

HUGO GUINNESS

JASON SCHWARTZMAN

Obituary (pages 1 to 9)

1.1.

INSERT:

The proof-print (fresh from the press, with crop marks and registration-X’s) of an obituary in the Declines and Deaths Section of a weekly newspaper magazine supplement. A line- drawing depicts an inkpot tipped over spilling a pool of black.

TITLE:

Memorial “Editor-in-Chief Dead at 75” by the Editorial Staff

INSERT:

A caricature of a tall, bald, pudgy, bespectacled man with a pencil tucked over his ear. Caption: “Arthur Howitzer, Jr. Son of a newspaper publisher, founder of this magazine. (B: 1900, D: 1975.)”

An ash-blackened (like every facade in this French city), five story, brick and stone building of flats andbureaux. It lists slightly to one side. A welded metalwork sign across the upper floor reads: “The French Dispatch (of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun)”. Down below, at street level: the magazine’s delivery dock and, directly adjacent, a narrow, bustlingboîte with a neonBar «Tabac» Journaux suspended over its striped canopies. Métro station: Printer’s District.

A voice (American, female, scholarly) begins:

A serving tray on a lazy-Susan. It twists left and right, back and forth, as it fills rapidly with: ademi-tasse, coffee in a tiny pitcher, and hot milk in a creamer; a half-bottle of cold white wine, perspiring; a crimson colored cocktail one finger deep; a short-stemmed glass of amberaperitif; a jigger of off- blackdigestif (which gets an egg cracked into it, two jolts of spicy sauce, and a raw oyster carefully slid from its half- shell); a small chocolate sundae; Coke in a bottle; a box of cigarettes with a book of matches; and a little glass of water with an effervescent tablet dropped in, fizzing.

2.2.

The tray booms up and sails, glass rattling but swift and sure, away from camera on the suspended palm and fingertips of a skilled waiter in a black waistcoat and long, white apron.

Thecour of the same building. A pressboard outhouse; a coal bin; sheaves of pulp-paper; a pile of rinds, crusts, and peels; and a pack of pubescent schoolboys in capes, caps, and short trousers who eat smushed éclairs and poke balloon-sticks at a sleeping derelict. The café’s rear door bangs open, the boys scatter, and our waiter emerges. In a wide, vertical frame, he speedily ascends (via three staircases, two catwalks, and a ladder) while the obituary continues:

A landing at the top floor. A cardboard hangs from a nail on the door: “Silence! Writers Writing”. The waiter pulls a chain- latch, bumps the door with a cocked hip, backs inside, then downs the bicarbonate of soda before kicking the door shut with a thwack.

MONTAGE:

An office filled with stacked art books and clippings, walls push-pinned top to bottom with postcards of modern art: an unseen woman drapes a negligée over a dressing-screen.

3.3.

An office stocked with neatly organized galoshes, walking sticks, hats, raincoats, boots, cameras, binoculars, notebooks, maps, and an upside-down bicycle with a flat tire: a man on a footstool, half off-screen, rummages on the top of a supply cabinet.

A Spartan, white office with only a pine desk and an oak chair: a seated woman, back to camera, smokes.

An office over-decorated in scarlet, lavender, and chartreuse with a marble torso of Adonis: a pair of espadrilled feet stick into view propped up at the end of a chintz daybed.

In the Press Room: a former-quarterback in rolled up shirt- sleeves, hat tilted back, corrects copy in longhand with his right hand while typing forty words per minute with his left.

In the File Room: a freckly string-bean loiters, laughing to himself, as he reads a thesaurus and eats crackers.

In a formal garden (spectacularly in bloom): a tall Calcuttan in dark sunglasses listens, nods, and takes notes with a braille slate and stylus as a teenage, feminine amanuensis whispers in his ear.

At a chalkboard: a proofreader with her hair in a bun parses a sentence. (”They will fail to notice, under the corner of a threadbare rug, the torn ticket-stub for an unclaimed hat which

4.4.

sits alone on the upper shelf of a cloakroom in a bus depot on the outskirts of the work-a-day town where Nickerson and his accomplices were apprehended.”)

INSERT:

A right hand traces a left hand with a long calligraphy brush, then sets to work quickly converting the outline into a gobbling but very stylish turkey.

A tiny man with afrisée of curly hair sitting at a drafting table, pleased, as he lovingly adds feathers to his picture.

Passing footsteps come to a sudden halt, and a finger jolts into shot:

An accountant tallying receipts on an adding machine. An out-of- focus figure, pacing, criss-crosses through frame in the foreground.

5.5.

A door with a frosted window. Painted letters read: Editor-in- Chief. The silhouette of a standing figure listens to the silhouette of a seated one.

A Queen Anne mansion on the best street of an old Mid-western, American city. In front, a uniformed chauffeur waits alongside a parked, mid-seventies hearse.

An open coffin on display in the parlor. Inside: a basket tied neatly with rope, a portable typewriter, a thick stack of white paper, and a dead body (late seventies, tall, bald, pudgy, bespectacled).

A remote graveyard in winter, late afternoon: white sky, white earth. A two-stroke excavator throttles and piston-pops, scraping at the frozen ground.

A long corridor. The camera follows the waiter with his tray of refreshments as he searches room to room. All desks have been abandoned.

6.6.

INSERT:

A legal document labeled “Last Will and Testament”. Editorial comments, corrections, and “stets” (each initialed “A.H.Jr.”) decorate the margins in blue pencil. (Example: “Better than melt: liquify.”) Howitzer narrates this shot himself:

A stack of magazines bound in twine which thumps onto a sidewalk. A news agent picks up the package and hangs a copy of the final issue by a clip on the shutter of his kiosk. Cover illustration: the spilled inkpot image now rendered in paint and color. Caption below: 1925-1975.

On one wall: a sun-faded map of the state of Kansas. On another: a mock-up of the issue-in-progress with table of contents and cards indicating articles, authors, page numbers, level-of- completion, etc. On a table: the proofreader, frowning, one long- stockinged leg swinging like a pendulum as she flips through manuscript pages. On the couch: a story editor and a legal advisor who mutter and shake their heads as they mark up galleys. In the corner: the cheery writer, reading an almanac and eating pretzels.

Behind his desk, arms folded, deep in thought, Howitzer looks very much as we last saw him (in his casket), though younger by ten years and lighter by a stone.

The waiter discreetly distributes the drinks order.

7.7.

Acum laude alumna (cardigan sweater, New England accent) reads from a spiral bound notebook, re-capping the status of the works- in-progress:

There is a general murmuring. The alumna flips to the next page.

Another murmuring. The alumna flips to the next page again.

8.8.

Murmuring, round three. The alumna flips the page once more, pauses, then asks, skeptical:

The room erupts: bustling and chattering in a chaotic hubbub of annoyed complaining. The alumna sips at the Coke bottle and gets to the point:

The room sighs and groans. Howitzer picks up the chocolate sundae. He eats it in four decisive bites and drinks the digestifconcoction. A double-rap, then the door cracks open. A copy boy pokes his pimply face into the room.

Tears stream down the copy boy’s flushed cheeks. Howitzer’s face tightens. He snarls:

Howitzer’s index finger juts, diagonal, into the air -- pointing to:

INSERT:

9.9.

A carved shingle fixed above the door. Two words: “NO CRYING.”

The copy boy reads the sign and swallows hard. He nods and exits. Howitzer shuffles the papers on his desk. He drums his fingers for ten seconds.

The room erupts again. Howitzer wanders over to the wall where he studies the mock-up of the issue. He switches the order of the cards/articles. He switches them back, uncertain. The camera slowly zooms in on the authors’ names in the table of contents.

Howitzer looks to the waiter lingering at his side.

The waiter shrugs. It is obvious to him:

Howitzer contemplates this suggestion as the obituary concludes:

10.10.

Sketchbook (pages 11 to 17)

11.11.

INSERT:

The proof-print of a weekly column in the City Section. A line- drawing depicts a Métro station entrance gate.

TITLE:

Local Color “The Cycling Reporter” by Herbsaint Sazerac

A touring bicycle with saddlebags and handlebar basket leans on its kickstand at the highest viewpoint above the smog-shrouded city. There is a clipboard steno pad mounted on the headlamp. A pencil dangles from a string.

Shuttered shops, shuttered windows, empty street. A voice (earnest, energetic, American) begins:

A stream of water surges from a storm sewer outlet-valve and rushes along a cobblestone trough, gathering candy wrappers, confetti, and cigarette butts into its current.

Clouds of white billow from a row of exhaust pipes above a boulangerieas a tired worker cranks open its metal shopfront gate.

Brassieres, slips, and stockings jolt incrementally into view on a succession of pullied ropes. A cleaning lady with a cigarette dangling from her lips leans out a window, beating a rug.

12.12.

A tall, trim cyclist, youthful but not young, dressed in a black beret with a black arm band. He holds up his pencil as he pedals up the lane addressing camera warmly. He is Sazerac.

Sazerac’s P.O.V. with handlebars in frame.

INSERT:

A tire company road atlas of the sprawling city with encircling ring-road and suburbs. Caption: ”Ennui-sur-Blasé, France. Population: 955,000.”

(Note: titles on the following before-and-after shots label them, on the left, “The Past”, on the right, “The Future”.)

SPLIT-SCREEN:

On the left, stalls manned by filthy street urchins brushing and polishing dozens of pairs of high-button shoes and boots; on the right, a brightly-lit, two-star inn (Hôtel de Chaussures) with automatic sliding-plexiglass door and a coin-operated shoeshine machine in its vestibule.

On the left, two workers lugging a cart laden with stacked masonry through a gaslit archway; on the right, an unsavory nightclub with a glowing-cursive La Brique Rougeover its facade.

On the left, a glass-roofed passagelined with dangling carcasses (cows, pigs, horses); on the right, a subway entrance labeled Abattoir.

13.13.

On the left, a dead-endimpasse sardine-packed with kleptos, muggers, and hooligans; on the right, the sameimpassesardine- packed with punk/new-wave drug addicts.

MONTAGE:

An excavated construction site fifty feet deep with a parked cement truck, stacked lumber/rebar on pallets, and dumpsters filled with demolition-refuse. Sazerac stands on the floor of the enormous yellow-dirt pit. The hook of a crane sways above his head. He addresses camera again:

A rumbling train car enters a tunnel and stops.

A view from the train car window as, outside, emergency-lights shift on, illuminating pipes and ledges trembling with hundreds of chestnut rats. The passengers onboard stare into space, unfazed. (Sazerac, one hand clasping a ceiling-strap and the other steadying his bicycle, marvels at the astonishing infestation.)

A winding block of high-angled intersecting gables and parapets vibrating with hundreds of mangy alley cats. (Sazerac, poking up from a skylight window, sets out a saucer of milk.)

A shallow, stone waterway only two meters wide zig-zagging the gaps between disused brick storehouses. Workers criss-cross flexing planks above the dark water. (Sazerac dips a mini-net

14.14.

from a pocket fishing-kit, scoops up a clump of wiggling bootlace eels, and eats a handful, raw.)

The previously-seen schoolboys, now crouched behind a parked Citroën delivery van, eat smushed creampuffs, then spring upon an old lady rolling a basket of groceries up the sidewalk and poke balloon-sticks at her. She shouts, furious, and swats violently with her cane until the boys scatter away.

A terraced cemetery densely dotted with tombs and markers. At the foot of a modest crypt (labeled, under a weeping angel, “Lucette Sazerac, 1920-1955”), Sazerac arranges a little meal, spread neatly across a rectangle of wax paper, and dines in silence.

A bi-level street with a steep stone staircase leading from a used bookstore down to a packed café surrounded by mopeds and scooters.

A hunchbacked, old man with a cane, a bag of medicine, and a muffler around his neck waits next to a bench on a lonely street. A bus arrives, the door opens, and the old man slowly attempts to bring his foot up to the bottom step.

Sazerac grips a handrail at the rear of a Citroën diaper-service delivery camionette as it pulls him swiftly down a congested boulevard on his bicycle. He addresses camera again:

15.15.

The road splits, unexpectedly, and Sazerac (shocked for an instant) jangles down a short staircase, disappearing out of frame, to an unseen crash-site below.

In a pouring rain: a long, blank, stone wall extending straight up out of frame as far as visible. Painted on it: “Prison/Asylum.”

In a falling snow: apissoir consisting of a shoulder-level metal privacy screen circling a dirty fountain. Painted on it: “Public Urinal.”

A dockworker extends a long pole into the water and drags a face- down, floating corpse toward the shore.

Well-dressed prostitutes, alone and in pairs, linger in their habitual locations (under a streetlamp, next to a cigarette machine, outside a strip-club stage door).

Competing performers (strongman, fire-eater, old woman warbling a torch song) entertain a crowd along the riverside. In the distance: laughter, breaking glass, a gunshot, a scream.

16.16.

Sazerac appears to struggle for control of the bicycle as he dodges potholes. He disappears behind a bookseller’s stall and shouts in pain/confusion. His bicycle, surprisingly balanced, immediately reemerges (at speed), now riderless.

Sazerac carries his bicycle over his shoulder down the sidewalk as the sky darkens from blue to black and the lights of the neighborhood twinkle on. The front wheel is bent and twisted like a coat hanger.

On the floor: Sazerac repairs his upturned bicycle. In the corner: the cheery writer reads a dictionary and eats peanuts. At the desk: Howitzer scrutinizes a proof-print, muttering/ quoting under his breath:

Howitzer interrupts himself, looking over his glasses:

Howitzer nods, unconvinced. He shuffles to another page and resumes his muttering/quoting:

Howitzer interrupts himself (looking over his glasses) again:

17.17.

Howitzer nods again, reluctant but resigned. Sazerac tightens a spoke. Howitzer shrugs.

Howitzer holds up the manuscript and points to a bracketed passage. Sazerac, suspicious, squints. Pause.

Howitzer crosses out the section of text with a blue pencil.

18.18.

Story #1 (pages 19 to 57)

19.19.

INSERT:

The proof-print of a biographical profile in the Arts and Artists Section. A line-drawing depicts a painter’s easel.

TITLE:

Studio Portrait “The Concrete Masterpiece” by J.K.L. Berensen

(Note: the following chapter of the film is presented in black and white with the exception of: 1. the latter-day cutaways to Berensen’s talk at a museum in Kansas; and 2. Rosenthaler’s work itself, which always appears in color within the black and white scenes.)

A white-washed hall the size of a squash court. Walls and ceiling are stained with damp and mold and plastered in concrete- render. Floors are stone, dirt, and mortar. A female model (Simone, age thirty) stands naked on a table, legs apart, feet flat, arms behind her back, frozen in an exceedingly uncomfortable pose. Across the room: a shirtless painter (Moses Rosenthaler, age fifty) in short-shorts and clogs works in oil, briskly and diligently. His body is barrel-chested; his face is thick-bearded; and, from head to toe, he is strikingly paint- splattered. (We see only the back of the medium-sized canvas.)

Rosenthaler pauses and examines his picture. He crosses the room and stares, close-up, at Simone. He grips her arms and firmly draws them back, taut. She frowns slightly. He daubs paint onto the side of her stomach with his brush. He blots color from his palette then daubs at her stomach again. He smudges the paint into her skin with his fingers. He studies the two pigments (oil paint and human flesh). Simone narrows her eyes and bites her lip. Rosenthaler blots to adjust the chroma once more -- but just before he can daub at Simone a third time, she slaps him hard across the face. Rosenthaler recoils, stumbling, scampers across the floor, and returns to his canvas where he immediately resumes his efforts.

Simone holds her pose.

A loud bell rings, a loud buzzer buzzes. Rosenthaler immediately lowers his brush and begins to organize his paints and turpentines into a tool box. Simone disappears behind a wooden panel and pulls a garment down from a hook. Rosenthaler disappears behind a storage locker, pulls off his short-shorts, and washes himself with an industrial hose and scrub-brush.

20.20.

(Note: the splattered-paint does not come off; in fact, Rosenthaler always appears fully splattered, at all times, in some form of pigment or medium.)

Simone re-emerges, now dressed in the uniform of a prison guard with black baton swinging at her waist. She finishes fixing her hair and tightens her belt. Rosenthaler re-emerges, now dressed in a prisoner’s tunic with text stenciled on the back:Condamné Psychopathe. He finishes drying himself with a toweling-rag.

Simone slips Rosenthaler’s arms into a straitjacket, clips the bindings, clanks open an iron-barred door, and directs the patient/inmate/artist out of the room. The door closes, locks, and latches. Silence.

The camera dollies across the empty space, past the table, the wooden panel, the storage locker, to finally reveal the recto of Rosenthaler’s unfinished painting: a thickly encrusted, oily impasto; almost totally abstract; flesh from the tube sculpted and schmeared with red, orange, and yellow skylight; slashed on one side with a black, blue, and purple border of tangled barbed- wire and shattering glass; Simone, unrecognizable, is nevertheless present in every brushstroke.

The spotlit proscenium of a modernist assembly hall. Projected on a screen above the stage: a black and white mug-shot/slide of Rosenthaler, paint-splattered. A woman of-a-certain-age (American, hair-sprayedcoiffure, couturedress) stands at the lectern with a wired remote-switcher clasped in her hand. She is poised, enthusiastic, and vibrantly engaging. She is J.K.L. Berensen.

An attentive audience listens in the dark.

Berensen clicks the remote-switcher, and further black and white slides flip into view showing a panorama-view of ten panels, each sixteen feet tall, which continue and expand the themes of

21.21.

thickly encrusted flesh, tangled barbed-wire, shattering glass, etc.

A catwalk around the upper perimeter of a cinder-block lunchroom which serves as the viewing platform for a presentation of rudimentary, primitive artworks: a fingerpainting of a tree, a papier mâchécactus, a wastebasket fashioned from bound twigs, etc. -- plus Rosenthaler’s portrait of Simone, now complete and varnished. A small number of prisoners and guards wanders from piece to piece, perusing and puttering. One prisoner, however, appears to be utterly transfixed by the painting (mentioned above) under his inspection. He is forty, clean-shaven, well groomed; wavy, silver hair, sharply parted; prison uniform, neat and pressed. He is Julian Cadazio.

Cadazio signals to a nearby, pot-bellied, wall-eyed guard:

Cadazio’s manner lacks any inkling of subservience. The guard reluctantly makes the effort to look up. He waits. Cadazio’s eyes have not left the canvas, but in one extended hand: there is a gold foil envelopedmarron-glacéin a fluted paper candy- cup.

22.22.

Pause. The guard slowly approaches, snatches thebonboninto his mouth, peers at a small label next to the painting, then studies a corresponding list.

The guard scoffs -- then hesitates. In Cadazio’s re-extended hand: three moremarron-glacés.

Cadazio follows the guard down a wide passage segmented by consecutive, iron-barred gates.

A tiny bedroom of extreme austerity: burlap hammock, cracked and yellowed ceramic washbasin, coiled radiator in the corner, padded walls. Rosenthaler and Cadazio face each other seated on low footstools. Simone stands outside the cage-door with a ring of skeleton keys in her hand.

Rosenthaler reacts subtly but at some length (surprise, suspicion, confusion, a hint of sad pride), looks to Simone, then says to Cadazio simply:

23.23.

Cadazio stares hard into Rosenthaler’s wounded eyes. Rosenthaler stares back at Cadazio’s poker-face -- then looks to Simone again before he mumbles:

Pause. Rosenthaler says inevitably:

Cadazio slowly turns to Simone. Simone looks back at him evenly. Cadazio nods, looks back to Rosenthaler, and says crisply:

Rosenthaler’s eyes widen. He and Cadazio both now look to Simone. Simone, mightily impressed, says softly:

24.24.

Cadazio digs into his pockets for a handful of coins and cigarettes plus his lastmarron-glacéas he explains:

Cadazio scribbles on a business card and hands it to Rosenthaler. Rosenthaler jabs one cigarette into his mouth, passes the second to Cadazio, sticks the spares under the elastic of his sock -- then presents the sweet to Simone. She eats, they smoke. Cadazio asks bluntly:

Cadazio leans forward and reads from a tin dog-tag hanging from a string around Rosenthaler’s neck:

The museum auditorium. Berensen is at her lectern. On the screen: a turn-of-the-century photograph of a bearded, well-to- do man seated bareback on a massive stallion alongside a very small boy on a very small pony.

25.25.

MONTAGE:

A filthy garret apartment with skylight windows, four unmade beds (one occupied by an unconscious, face down woman), and three artists at easels, all painting still-lifes. Among them is young Rosenthaler (played by a younger actor), already paint- splattered (though in softer hues), holding a bottle of beer in the same hand as his brush.

A footbridge busy with tourists. Young Rosenthaler paints the river view while holding a bottle of wine in the same hand as his brush. A passer-by drops a coin into his upturned hat.

A boxcar clacking along a curving track above a sunflower field. Young Rosenthaler, in hobo rags, paints a flea-bitten dog while holding a flask of whiskey in the same hand as his brush.

The terrace of a white stone desert fort. Young Rosenthaler, in khakis andkepi, paints a seated officer while holding a snifter of cognac in the same hand as his brush. A whizzing bullet pierces the canvas, and the company scrambles for weapons and cover -- except Rosenthaler, who continues calmly at his canvas.

A weedy cloister with stone walls and scattered pebbles. Young Rosenthaler, naked, his dark-shadowed eyes bloodshot and deranged, paints a self-portrait in a hand mirror while holding a beaker ofeau-de-vie in the same hand as his brush.

A dockside tavern. Young Rosenthaler, in sleeveless undershirt, paints a picture of an absinthe bottle while holding a glass of its contents in the same hand as his brush.

26.26.

At the other end of the bar, two hulking, smirking bartenders lean on the counter in front of a weathered, elderly man, needling him. The old man is stoic. Young Rosenthaler watches like an animal. Under his breath, almost inaudibly but unmistakably: he growls. The camera dollies to a kitchen door porthole where a scullery boy renders (with a meat-saw) the hanging carcass of a slaughtered calf.

A padded prison cell. Young Rosenthaler, splattered in machine- grease, pours a single shot from a bottle labeled Mouthwashde Menthe(150 proof). Off-screen: a latch clanks. Young Rosenthaler looks up. He rises from his stool and makes way as his older self, identically dressed and splattered, enters and (with a gentle acknowledgement, eye to eye, of the boy he once was) takes the seat. Young Rosenthaler removes the dog-tag from around his own neck and loops it over older Rosenthaler’s head. Young Rosenthaler exits. Older Rosenthaler sips the mouthwash and stares at the blank walls.

TITLE:

Year 11, Day 1

A basement classroom. Simone sits at a metal desk next to the door. Fifteen prisoners shuffle past her and file into rows of benches behind footstools prepared with various pottery-making supplies. Rosenthaler enters last. He pauses in front of Simone and says quietly:

Rosenthaler digs into his pockets. He produces a small, thin ticket and holds it up, uncertain. Simone tears the corner and gives it back to him. As Rosenthaler begins to move toward his seat -- Simone stops him with an announcement:

27.27.

Rosenthaler, startled, speaks under his breath:

Rosenthaler looks stricken. Simone nods for him to speak. He turns to the room. He gathers his thoughts. Finally, he begins:

Troubled convicts (shorn heads, crooked noses, combat scars) stare at Rosenthaler. His hard face is streaked with tears. Simone says simply:

28.28.

Simone points. Rosenthaler looks to: a hunk of wet clay on a footstool in front of an empty seat at the back of the room.

Five minutes later. The entire class of convicts has gathered to watch, intrigued, as Rosenthaler briskly, nimbly, expertly sculpts. Rosenthaler pauses to study his work. He twists the sculpture around for everyone to see.

INSERT:

A hasty but magnificent vase with bas-relief depicting a bouquet of wildflowers with wind-blown petals floating in the air and a crane standing on one leg. Simone descends into the shot and studies the vessel -- impressed, then suddenly and deeply moved. Rosenthaler asks softly:

Simone looks up to Rosenthaler. Her lips move, but her voice is inaudible under Berensen’s:

Rosenthaler’s rough, clay-splattered hand enters frame with a blade of straw pinched between two fingers, and, in one rapid, sure effort: cuts a beautiful, extravagantly-filigreed letter “S” into the wet clay on a cloud above the etched flora.

Berensen at her lectern.

Berensen remote-switches through a succession of black and white slides of Simone: at fourteen, with numerous siblings, reaping in a wheat field; at sixteen, pregnant, plucking a goose; at eighteen, not pregnant, skinning a rabbit; at twenty, in a nurse’s uniform on a battlefield with soldiers advancing and retreating in the background.

29.29.

(Note: in each of these images, all other subjects, human and animal, are blurry; only Simone holds completely still for the photograph.)

Paused on the screen: an image of a somewhat younger, paint- splattered, naked Berensen caught reaching for a dressing gown. Berensen finally notices and mutters, startled:

Berensen remote-switches back to Simone at eighteen, briskly re- composes herself, and carries on:

Midnight. Rosenthaler and Simone, motionless and naked, recline on a heap of bed linens and dishrags in a deep pile on the floor. Berensen continues:

In the meantime, Rosenthaler has been searching for the words to begin the scene:

Simone and Rosenthaler say simultaneously:

ROSENTHALER SIMONE

I love you. I don’t love you.

30.30.

Silence. Rosenthaler attempts to propose marriage:

31.31.

Rosenthaler sighs. He digs out a bottle of mouthwash from the tangled linens and takes a sip. Simone frowns. Rosenthaler explains:

Pause. Simone produces a child’s sock from a knitted sack and begins to darn it. Rosenthaler looks up and stares into the camera. His face lightens.

Rosenthaler’s P.O.V. of the ceiling. Purple soot blackens its edges and corners. Nicotine yellows its cracked plaster. Rusty water stains speckle all across in faded flesh-tones. Decades of pollution and decay meld into a spectacular visual pandemonium.

Rosenthaler says, transported:

Rosenthaler turns to look into Simone’s eyes. He says profoundly:

Berensen at her lectern again.

32.32.

A storefront situated on a brief cul-de-sac over the river. Beveled letters above the door identify it as: “Cadazio Uncles and NephewGalerie (Landscapes, Still-lifes, andObjets d’Art)”.

A showroom one flight up from the street. Summery landscapes on one wall. Kitchen-table still-lifes on another. Bronze heads on pedestals. Cadazio stands next to an easel which displays a hidden artwork cloaked in velvet. He addresses his uncles Nick and Joe.

Cadazio unveils the familiar canvas (”Simone, Naked, etc.”). His uncles immediately produce various corrective lenses (spectacles, monocle, a magnifying glass) and stare for a long moment. Finally:

33.33.

UNCLE JOE/UNCLE NICK (simultaneously) No.

As Cadazio goes to a cabinet of shallow file-drawers, opens the top one, and withdraws a beige envelope, he continues:

Cadazio opens the envelope and produces:

INSERT:

A charcoal drawing of a bird, simple and exquisite.

Uncle Nick holds the picture carefully by the edges and studies it. Cadazio snaps his fingers.

34.34.

After a brief, delicate tug-of-war, Uncle Nick, reluctantly, releases the drawing back to Cadazio.

Cadazio points to “Simone”.

Cadazio is almost surprised to realize that he, honestly, means the following:

The uncles examine the canvas, touching it, smelling it, etc. Cadazio says with finality:

Uncle Nick folds his hands and nods. He says mystically:

Cadazio nods, also mystical. Silence. Uncle Joe blurts:

A court of law. Three magistrates on one side of an elevated altar watch as Simone escorts Rosenthaler (in straitjacket and leg-irons) from a side door to a central chair. She padlocks him to the armrest. Rosenthaler sits, wary, facing his judges. Ten rows of benches behind him are empty with the exception of the front, occupied by Cadazio and his uncles. Simone, on a stool at Rosenthaler’s side, sets to work darning another child’s sock as the proceedings begin:

35.35.

The Chief Magistrate raises an eyebrow. He says evenly:

Rosenthaler hesitates. He confers briefly with Simone at a whisper. He nods and clarifies:

The magistrates murmur. Simone resumes her darning.

Rosenthaler scratches his chin. He looks out the window. A bird of prey snatches a white dove out of the sky in a puff of feathers. Rosenthaler says, sincerely and genuinely apologetic, almost inaudible:

Cadazio interrupts loudly, more or less completely drowning out Rosenthaler as he repeats himself:

ROSENTHALER CADAZIO

They had it coming? Forgive me.

The Chief Magistrate frowns. Rosenthaler turns. Simone pauses her darning. Cadazio, unexpectedly: has raised his hand.

36.36.

CHIEF MAGISTRATE CADAZIO No. I’ll be brief.

Cadazio’s uncles look uneasy but intrigued as Cadazio crawls over a partition (slipping slightly as he struggles to get his leg over) and “approaches the bench”. The magistrates make no effort to impede him -- though their expressions suggest extreme disapproval. Cadazio launches into a persuasive spiel:

Cadazio looks to his uncles. They nod, concerned and serious. The magistrates are a stone wall.

Simone is already putting away her darning. Uncle Joe interjects from the stalls:

Berensen at her lectern again.

INSERT:

37.37.

A promotional poster advertising a public debate in a town hall. Across the top: a photograph of ”Simone, Naked, etc.” Across the bottom: “The Next Mona Lisa?”

MONTAGE:

The painting is shown on display in various exhibition spaces around the world. In each location, a violent riot is in- progress among art patrons in dinner jackets and evening gowns. First: a municipal meeting hall in France. Champagne bottles fly through the air, shattering and exploding.

Next: a vast conservatory in England. Punching, choking, shouting, screaming, bleeding.

Finally: a tent at a middle-American harvest-festival with carnival rides, cotton candy, shooting gallery, etc. One group of attendees attempts to light the venue on fire while another group resists them.

Cadazio and his uncles watch the destructive skirmish, eyes bright, gleeful.

On the block: Rosenthaler’s perfect sparrow. Paddles rise and fall in rapid succession as an auctioneer, startled but enthusiastic, tries to keep up with exuberant bidding.

Additional lots wait in the wings: Rosenthaler’s previously-seen still life, river view, flea-bitten dog, self-portrait, absinthe

38.38.

bottle, and seated officer at desert fort (bullet hole still intact).

Berensen at her lectern again.

MONTAGE:

The camera shoots through an expansive pane of glass which fills the frame as Rosenthaler paints directly onto it, brushing and slashing in aggressive bursts (and jump-cuts), one color at a time. First: a dusty, pale orange.

Next: a thick, dark red.

Next: an oily black.

Next: shades of dirty ash.

Next: a waxy, nearly fluorescent, slightly sudsy yellow.

Finally: a lukewarm porridge.

MONTAGE:

A naked Simone strikes various poses which appear to be (and, in fact, without the aid of visual effects, are) physically

39.39.

impossible. First: body twisted like a corkscrew, arms double- jointed akimbo, illuminated from a high window.

Next: flamingo-legged, fingers laced palms up, underlit by a flickering oil lamp.

Next: seated on a steaming radiator in thinker pose, puffs of breath visible in the frigid air.

Next: in close-up, calmly ignoring a mosquito biting her cheek. It takes off, leaving only a tiny dot of blood which Simone wipes away with her pinky, perfectly clean.

Next: hanging upside down from a ceiling pipe in a frozen butterfly stroke.

Finally: cleaning splattered paint from her arms and legs with steel wool and distilled acid.

A small, round chamber as tall as a silo. At a grated landing mounted to the wall: an open, iron clad hatch. The latch has been pried open, and the door handle lies below in a pile of splinters and screws. Narrow steps wind along the wall ten feet down to a disapproving guard with his hands in his pockets. He

40.40.

stands next to a control panel featuring a prominent throw- switch.

Rosenthaler says grimly, off-screen:

The guard snorts dismissively. On the other side of the room: Rosenthaler is seated in an electric chair with a metal headband clamped around his forehead and leather bindings belted around his wrists. He explodes:

Simone appears in the doorway. She frowns.

Rosenthaler looks slightly guilty -- but defiant. He insists:

Simone’s eyes flash down to a half-finished bottle of mouthwash tucked discreetly next to one of the legs of the electric chair. She says gently:

Simone descends the staircase as she says calmly to the guard:

The guard exits. Simone stares at Rosenthaler, curious. Rosenthaler stares back at her, bitter. Simone reaches for the throw-switch and flips it for a fraction of a second. There is a powerful clack, and Rosenthaler takes a 10,000-volt zap to the body. His hair sparks, his body spasms, and smoke comes out of his ears. After a brief moment of frozen astonishment, trembling and smoldering, he glares at Simone, wary. Simone shrugs.

41.41.

Silence. Simone approaches and stops in front of Rosenthaler with her hands on her hips. She says, matter-of-fact:

Simone holds the throw-switch again -- Rosenthaler flinches -- as she asks:

Rosenthaler slips his hands out the bindings and takes off the metal headband, then ascends the steps and goes out the door. Simone returns to the control panel and clicks off the power. The electric chair jiggles and rattles as it hums down to silence.

Berensen at her lectern again.

Berensen brings up a slide of a gathering of paint-splattered men (burly, grumpy, unwashed, disheveled, stylish) and one woman (small-boned but indestructible) posing for a photograph on the

42.42.

street below a prison window. Rosenthaler, inside, smiles broadly.

Berensen reaches into a nook in the lectern and produces a small thermos, which she empties, neat, into a short glass. She comes out from behind her lectern and stands near the edge of the stage, closer to the audience, sipping as she continues more intimately:

Berensen turns away and circles back behind her lectern. She refers briefly to her notes, then presses on:

Two guards slowly slide open a pair of high, steel-clad, spike- topped, oak doors revealing Cadazio and his uncles waiting on the road outside. In the reverse angle: two other guards slowly slide open another pair of identical doors, revealing Rosenthaler (shackles/straitjacket) waiting with Simone in the recess court inside. The two opposing parties advance to meet at a locked, iron-barred gate in the middle.

TITLE:

43.43.

Three Years Later

Cadazio faces Rosenthaler, arms crossed, steely. Uncle Joe stands behind him. A servant provides a chair for Uncle Nick who sits with arms propped on the top of his cane. Cadazio addresses Rosenthaler crisply:

Uncle Joe holds up a letter-press card on thick, gold-trimmed stock embossed luxuriously with scarlet script.

Cadazio holds up two fingers. Rosenthaler grits his teeth, stained and chipped. Once again, softly: he growls. (Another guard, armed with a carbine, watches from a turret above.) Cadazio retreats slightly while attempting to mask his instinctive fear. He points to Simone:

Rosenthaler flinches, surprised. He frowns and turns to Simone. Simone nods.

44.44.

Rosenthaler looks betrayed. Simone looks nonplussed. Cadazio looks vindicated. Rosenthaler murmurs, vaguely optimistic:

Cadazio screams in frustration, and his uncles throw their hands up into the air, grip their hair, close their eyes, shake their heads, etc.

Berensen at her lectern again.

Berensen brings up a triptych of black and white slides: one shows a landmark, modernist residence resembling a doorstop which overlooks a corn field; the other two show vitrines filled with Ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian idols, tools, and vessels.

Berensen remote-switches to another triptych: one shows a closer view of the same house; the other two show rooms filled with cubist and surrealist paintings and sculptures -- and the visiting artists who created them.

Berensen remote-switches to a slide of a pioneer-handsome, sixty- year-old woman, slightly stout, perfect carriage, ebony black eyes, dressed and done in the most highly refined, sophisticated, continental style. She is outdoors, seated in an armchair shaped like a lobster. She is Upshur “Maw” Clampette. A water tower in the background reads: Liberty, KS.

45.45.

Berensen clicks off the projector.

An amphibious aircraft in flight over the Atlantic Ocean (left to right). Clouds wisp by in the background as we dissolve to a cut-away view of the interior of the vessel. Waiters prepare cocktails, and passengers read magazines. In first class, privatized: Clampette (in an embroidered, kimono-style dressing gown) sits at a low table smoking a cigarette and drinking a night-cap as she completes her correspondence with the assistance of a social secretary and a somewhat younger Berensen, herself. Clampette rises, and a maid enters with an ashtray and a hairnet which she stretches over her mistress’ head as they make their way down the aisle to a section of curtained bunks. A doctor appears from aft with a tray of tonics and remedies. He spoons two doses of milk of magnesia directly into Clampette’s mouth, followed by a brief hypodermic injection to the shoulder. Berensen assists Clampette up the ladder to her bunk and passes her a mystery novel open to the correct page. Clampette offers Berensen her unfinished cigarette, and they pass it back and forth, sharing the last few puffs before Clampette pulls the curtains shut. Berensen enters the lower bunk and pulls her own curtains shut. Her hand pokes out through a gap in the fabric to tap ash onto the floor. The lights in the cabin go dim.

Throughout this scene, Cadazio dictates in voiceover:

46.46.

Cadazio and his uncles wait, standing and seated in various positions around the showroom. They are dressed for the evening. Scarves and coats are draped on chair backs and pedestals. Three thick bundles of large-format banknotes, each the size of a sheet of writing paper, rest stacked on a gilded tabletop at the center of the room. Each uncle checks the time (by pocket-watch, wristwatch, or hourglass) while Berensen explains:

Cadazio opens the curtains to check the clock tower above the placeacross the river.

A high-angle shot racing up one of the city’s narrow streets following a motorcade composed of two police motorcycles and a large paddy-wagon with cherry-lights whirling and sirens howling, blasting, blaring, and wailing.

MONTAGE:

The rear section of a prisoner-transport vehicle with wire-mesh windows and steel benches in two sets of tiered, facing rows. The passengers include: Cadazio and his uncles; Clampette and Berensen; Clampette’s secretary; sixteen additional well-heeled art collectors in furs, jewels, dinner jackets, black tie, etc; the entire coterie of the French Splatter-school, as seen in the earlier photograph, along with their girlfriends (who appear to be prostitutes); and two, uniformed wait-staff. All carry copies of an exhibition-program labeled Rosenthaler/Cadazio.

Overhead angle: Cadazio’s hands count out a bribe into the palm of the paddy-wagon driver.

A long, subterranean corridor of stone and mortar construction with a narrow, brick path running alongside a coursing drainage- gutter. Cadazio leads the procession described above, flanked like a priest by two waterworks-men in pin-striped overalls (who carry glowing acetylene gas-lamps) and the two wait-staff (who push rolling hotel service-trollies).

Overhead angle: Cadazio’s hands count out a bribe into the palms of the two waterworks-men.

A cement-paved exercise yard seen from a high tower. Searchlights, periodically, sweep across the walls and cast

47.47.

barbed-wire shadows. The visitors traverse, diagonal, in silent single-file, escorted by a quartet of prison guards.

Overhead angle: Cadazio’s hands count out bribes into the palms of the four guards.

A wide passage segmented by consecutive, iron-barred gates. Jeers and taunts echo and reverberate from rows of cells as the congregation advances behind a dozen prison guardsen masse through the dimly-lit penitentiary.

Overhead angle: Cadazio’s hands count out bribes into the palms of the twelve guards.

An open doorway looking out from a pitch black space. The last guests, one by one, cross the threshold. The door closes, locks, and latches. We are in complete darkness. Long silence. A hushed murmur. Cadazio’s voice calls out:

A beat. Then: Rosenthaler’s voice grunts from somewhere across the room:

There is a contact-bang, and the hobby-room (the previously-seen white-washed hall the size of a squash court) lights up bright: the space is now entirely muraled in ten astonishing panels, each sixteen feet tall, as seen in Berensen’s lecture-slides. (Now, for the first time, we see them in color, and they are magnificent.)

Rosenthaler, seated in a wheelchair, wears a mattress-ticking necktie with his prison uniform. He is stone-faced. Simone stands at his side.

48.48.

Cadazio absorbs the view: the artist and the opus. His mouth falls open. His eyes goggle. He shouts at the silent gathering:

A moment. Suddenly, Cadazio bubbles over and exclaims, voice cracking and screeching like an adolescent schoolboy’s:

Cadazio pumps his fists and scrabbles to the center of the room, spinning in all directions to observe the encircling artwork. His voice alternates between delirious hollering and reverential whispering:

Corks pop, and the wait-staff sweep through the mingling crowd with trays ofcoupes and canapés. Cadazio approaches Rosenthaler.

Cadazio leans down and kisses Rosenthaler on the forehead. He turns to Simone and kisses her, as well. The entire group of Splatter-school artists approaches. One of their companions speaks to Rosenthaler on their behalf:

49.49.

Each artist holds up a small portrait: a drawing on a napkin, a sketch on the exhibition program, a sculpture made from a champagne cork and its wire-cage, etc. Rosenthaler bows and mumbles thank-you’s, moved and embarrassed (though not very impressed). Cadazio points:

Across the room, Clampette stands close to one of the panels, mesmerized, indeed. Berensen lingers some distance behind her. Cadazio approaches briskly and idles at her side. Clampette says, eventually, in the twang of her region:

Cadazio reaches out to touch the picture. He rubs it more forcefully. He scratches and claws at it with the fingernails of both hands, grimacing in panic. He is thunder-struck.

50.50.

Cadazio, abruptly, darts away and sails across the room to confront Rosenthaler. He detonates:

Cadazio points. His uncles watch and listen. They do not appear to comprehend the situation on any level.

Rosenthaler tenses and winces as if he has been, literally, stabbed in the back. He growls (as before).

51.51.

Without rising, Rosenthaler charges Cadazio like a rolling rhinoceros, torquing his wheels with powerful force, kicking and lunging as Cadazio dodges and feints. Cadazio throws champagne into Rosenthaler’s eyes, blinding him briefly, then darts behind the hulking artist and grabs the handles of his wheelchair. He shoves hard and sprint-pushes Rosenthaler, rumbling across the open gallery, launching the wheelchair and its passenger at speed directly off a three-step ledge. The wheelchair is airborne for an instant, then lands, skidding, with a thunk, and continues at high velocity directly into the cement center of one of the vast panels. It smashes with a cracking, metallic thud. The room goes dead silent. Rosenthaler is immobile.

Simone turns to Cadazio, stern. Cadazio looks sheepish.

Suddenly, Rosenthaler quick-reverses, spins around, and accelerates, bumpily rocketing back up the steps (with remarkable athleticism) and re-charging Cadazio like an even more ferocious rolling rhinoceros. Cadazio flees. The assembled guests watch, surprised, perplexed, amused, frightened, side- stepping as: the two combatants circle the perimeter of the room, screaming at each other furiously. As they whiz by Simone, she deftly extends her foot, tripping Cadazio into a tumbling spill, and, in almost the same instant, flips the hand-brake lever on the wheelchair, freezing the axles and obliterating the spokes. The vehicle, essentially, disintegrates as Rosenthaler ejects through space, landing heavily directly on top of his representative.

Cadazio, flat on his back, speaks up into Rosenthaler’s face:

The fight is over. Rosenthaler, hobbling, is assisted to a stool, onto which he crumples and wilts. Cadazio asks Simone, bewildered:

Simone thinks for a minute. She starts to explain, then simplifies it:

Cadazio deflates. He nods. He retreats among his uncles, who appear to be woozy and disoriented. Uncle Nick fans himself with an exhibition-program. Uncle Joe takes a tablet from a tin and washes it down with champagne. Cadazio says, heartbroken:

52.52.

Cadazio shields his vision with his flat palm and pivots side to side, studying the work out of the corners of his eyes. As he returns to Rosenthaler, Rosenthaler throws open his arms, and the men embrace like two exhausted prizefighters. Tears stream down their faces.

Rosenthaler shrugs. He says softly:

They watch Simone, on the opposite side of the room, standing with her back to them, centered in front of another of the massive panels. Berensen informs us (from the future):

Cadazio puts his hand on Rosenthaler’s shoulder.

Simone turns around to look at Rosenthaler and Cadazio. She smiles and imitates the pose -- albeit cubist -- implied in the painting: a runner at full stride, diving across an imaginary finish line. (Her balance, of course, is impossibly perfect.)

53.53.

In the meantime: Clampette and Berensen carefully study the surfaces of one of the other panels. Berensen wears archivist’s white cotton gloves as she assesses the qualities of the material.

Simone sits perched on the knee of Rosenthaler’s good leg, darning another child’s sock (of a somewhat larger size than previously-seen). Berensen glides over to Cadazio.

Cadazio’s face goes blank and frozen. He mutters, stunned:

Berensen hands Cadazio a slip of paper. He whisks on a pair of reading glasses. His uncles materialize to huddle around, peering over his shoulder. They murmur their approval. Cadazio asks Berensen:

54.54.

Cadazio and his uncles appear to be, tentatively, relieved. Uncle Nick signals to the band. The music resumes, and the party revives.

One of the wait-staff, hovering nearby, interjects confidentially:

Cadazio hesitates. He asks, irritated:

The wait-staff points to a wiry, scrappy, gristly, previously- unseen convict loitering at his side. Cadazio does a double-take and frowns. He says sharply, eye-balling the convict:

Cadazio strides to the door and pokes his head out. In the corridor, there is, indeed, an angry mob of approximately 300 prisoners holding improvised weapons (broom handles, pipe- sections, bricks and chains). Cadazio asks them rhetorically:

Cadazio leans back inside and shouts to Rosenthaler:

55.55.

Cadazio attempts to re-slam the door, but the convict resists and grapples with him. Simone baton-whomps him on the top of his head with all her might. Blood spurts as the convict yelps and bellows in a thundering baritone:

Iron hinges shoot off in three directions as if blasted apart by explosive charges, and the hobby-room door whangs flat onto the floor with a boom. The mob stampedes into the art exhibition: berserk, blood-thirsty, and spectacularly out of control. The assembled guests, screaming and scrambling, attempt to defend themselves.

Simone continues to baton-whomp numerous convicts. Cadazio smashes a champagne bottle and jabs it into the faces of various attackers. Clampette produces a Derringer pistol, shoots two men dead, and reloads. Berensen discharges a high-pressure fire extinguisher into the melee. The artists and their prostitutes fight like sailors. Cadazio’s uncles struggle to prevent themselves from being strangled to death.

For the first time in the evening, Rosenthaler unsteadily rises to his feet. In one hand: a large can of red paint (pigeon blood). In the other: a bottle of turpentine. Again: he growls.

Close-up: Rosenthaler swigs the turpentine, throws the bottle aside, pours the full can of paint over the top of his head,

56.56.

lights a match, and roars, berserk (splattering: people, painting, and camera). He spits, breathing fire.

A military aircraft in flight over the Atlantic Ocean (right to left). Clouds wisp by in the background as we dissolve to a cut- away view of the interior of the vessel. In the massive rear- cabin: an army tank, a troop carrier, three jeeps, and the entire hobby-room, intact, suspended from the ceiling trusses on a net-cradle. It sways slightly in the mild turbulence.

Side by side in jump-seats with four-point harnesses and parachute backpacks: a gently aging Cadazio and his bright, eager, young relation.

The hobby-room. Berensen and the audience from her lecture have gathered inside the transplanted structure to view Rosenthaler’s creation. Outside the open doorway: a corn field rustles in the prairie breeze.

At the window: Berensen studies slides and re-orders them in a carousel tray. In the corner: the accountant makes notations on slips and tickets. In the middle of the room: Howitzer paces, shuffling a sheaf of receipts, muttering/quoting under his breath:

Howitzer interrupts himself, looking over his glasses at Berensen:

57.57.

Howitzer grumbles, unconvinced. He shuffles more receipts and resumes his muttering/quoting:

Howitzer interrupts himself (looking over his glasses) again:

Howitzer grumbles once more. He says to the accountant, resigned:

The accountant totals the figures on her adding machine.

58.58.

Story #2 (pages 59 to 96)

59.59.

INSERT:

The proof-print of a correspondent’s diary in the Politics/Poetry Section. A line-drawing depicts a Citroën economy-car, vandalized and on fire.

TITLE:

Youth Movement “Revisions to a Manifesto” by Lucinda Krementz

A paneled room of generous proportions with high ceilings and a vast, ancient table at its center. Seated across from each other, cross-legged, in the middle of the desktop: a middle-aged professor (tall, distinguished, rigid) and a nineteen-year-old boy (skinny, wild-haired, electric). They both stare intently at, situated between them: a chessboard. The professor keeps his fingers on a bishop while he re-thinks. The boy (Zeffirelli) puffs on a dark, skinny, Tuscan cigar. The room overflows all around with a hundred students and a dozen faculty, standing on cabinets, sitting on floors, crouched on windowsills, spilling into the corridors and vestibules. All stare at the two players, mid-match.

A voice (American, chain-smoker, low [for a woman]) begins:

In the corner: two boys (a giraffe and a fire-hydrant) whisper simultaneously. They are Vittel and Mitch-mitch.

VITTEL MITCH-MITCH

Zeffirelli’s cramping the He should open the position professor’s bishop. and counter with both rooks.

At the chessboard, the professor releases his bishop and taps a game clock. Zeffirelli makes a brisk move, knight to bishop etc, and taps the timer himself.

60.60.

Discreetly seated on the top shelf of a bookcase in a corner, a sensible, fifty-year-old woman (skirt-suit, pearls, trench coat, large handbag) watches, listens, smokes a cigarette, and takes notes in a composition book. She is deeply curious, deeply engaged, entertained/amused. She is Lucinda Krementz. She frowns, then yells:

Across the room: a student in a turtleneck sweater, uniform smock, long socks with sandals, and checker-striped motorcycle helmet (worn at all times throughout the story) is standing on the hem of a tapestry (knights, ladies, lions, unicorn) while she checks her make-up in a powder-puff compact mirror. She looks down at her feet, mortified. She carefully steps off the draped cloth and neatens it. She looks back to Krementz and sticks out her tongue. She is Juliette. Krementz raises an eyebrow. At the table: the professor thwarts an attack on the queen’s flank. Various quarters of the room cheer and grumble.

A comfortable fifth-floor flat cluttered with books and papers. Seated at a futuristic, white, round table over a spotless, white, round rug: a forty-ish couple. The husband wears a pullover sweater and long sideburns. The wife wears a caftan and long braids. In the background: twin girls, thirteen, eat alone in the kitchen, listening to a news report on the radio. Krementz faces her friends, chilly, as the husband twists a corkscrew.

A stone wall. Spray-paint graffitied onto it:“Les Enfants sont Grognons.”

61.61.

Krementz lighting a cigarette as the wine is poured. She says, matter-of-fact:

The husband moves briskly to fetch a receptacle. The wife, sheepish, sits in silence. Krementz looks up coolly at a not- entirely-successful chandelier.

The husband delivers an oversized, crystal bowl (which appears to weigh about ten pounds) and clunks it onto the table under Krementz’s cigarette just as ashes begin to crumble.

Krementz exhales a stream of smoke as the husband slides back into his seat, uneasy.

The husband and wife respond simultaneously, finishing each other’s sentences:

HUSBAND WIFE

We didn’t mean to offend you. We thought you might decline We’re sorry. the invitation. If we warned

you.

Faintly, outside: shouting, chanting, a periodic ricochet-pop.

62.62.

WIFE HUSBAND

Just give him a chance. He’s How long’s it been? Since very intelligent. what’s-his-name?

Strangely: Krementz and the couple -- all three, at once -- reach not for their wine but, instead, glasses of water. They each drink a quick, solid gulp. As soon as Krementz swallows:

HUSBAND WIFE

We don’t think that. Of course, you’re not.

All three begin to blink, squint, and sniffle.

HUSBAND WIFE

Because it’s sad. We don’t Loneliness is a kind of want you to be alone. poverty.

Pause. At the same instant: Krementz and her hosts begin to cough, choke, and rub their eyes. The noise in the streets has now erupted into a rumbling, clattering roar, punctuated by megaphone shouts and a mixture of sirens.

63.63.

HUSBAND WIFE

Spread a damp cloth on every I can’t believe it reaches us windowsill. up here. On the fifth floor.

The husband stands up and moves toward the curtains as a bright light flashes outside. Distant thumps reverberate. The wife goes into the kitchen to sweep the girls down the back corridor. Krementz puts a napkin to her face and drifts across the apartment, into a bathroom. She closes the door.

White tiles, dangling towels, a family of toothbrushes. Krementz glares at herself in the mirror. Her eyes are blood-shot. Her mascara is smudged. She turns on the tap and watches the water run. Behind her: a subtle splash. She frowns. A pair of bare feet balanced on the rim of the end of the tub shift and wiggle. Krementz crosses the room and whisks the shower curtain fully open with a jingling tug. Zeffirelli, soaking, turbaned in terrycloth, smoking another skinny cigar, looks shocked. He holds a graph-paper notebook and a four-color ballpoint pen poised mid-sentence. Pause.

Zeffirelli sniffs the air. Krementz quietly realizes and/or acknowledges:

Zeffirelli nods, thoughtful. He and Krementz lock eyes for a moment.

64.64.

Krementz jerks the shower curtain shut again. She goes back to the sink, searches in the medicine cabinet, and finds a tube of mascara. She fixes her eyes.

Zeffirelli slings the shower curtain open again. He holds up his notebook and says vigorously:

65.65.

Zeffirelli jolts up out of the tub, splashing and naked, lunges across the bathroom, thrusts the graph-paper notebook into Krementz’s hands, then darts away and slips back into the water. Krementz opens the notebook and reads, frowning, flipping pages. Outside the room: a doorbell rings, a dog barks. Krementz says, skeptical:

Krementz produces a red felt-tip pen and immediately begins grading the document like a book report. Zeffirelli watches tensely.

Krementz emerging with the graph-paper notebook in hand. A tall, wispy-bearded, blond man in corduroy waits, seated, with the couple at the table. He immediately rises to his feet. It is clear: the journey from wherever he has come from has been difficult. His sleeve is ripped. His shirt is torn. There is a small bandage on his forehead. He is dusty, mussed, and bruised. He smiles, reserved. He is Paul. Krementz nods:

66.66.

HUSBAND WIFE

Paul Duval. Lucinda Krementz.

Krementz stiffens as Paul kisses her on both cheeks.

Paul withdraws slightly. Krementz tucks herself back into the group. Paul sits, then holds forth at some length while Krementz continues in voiceover:

The girls, back in the kitchen, now in pajamas with the shirts pulled up over their noses, raise the volume on the radio. The husband refills glasses. The wife passes around a bowl of radishes. Paul, in the meantime, summarizes:

Paul smiles. Krementz says bluntly, signaling “stop”:

Paul hesitates. He looks to the husband and wife. They murmur, uneasy. Krementz suddenly clutches her pearls, rolls back her eyes, makes a gurgling sound, mock-suffocating, then plunks her face down on a plate and plays dead. Paul opens his mouth and pauses. The husband looks up at the ceiling. The wife looks down at the table. The bathroom door opens again, and Zeffirelli enters. He now wears a transparent rain slicker over his clothes and a gas-mask over his face. His voice echoes inside the breathing-device:

67.67.

The husband and wife are, momentarily, speechless. Zeffirelli offers a second gas-mask to Krementz. She stands up, puts it on, and reverbs to her hosts:

Krementz follows Zeffirelli out through thesalon. Off-screen: the apartment’s front door opens and shuts. Paul, puzzled, and the couple, angry/humiliated/worried, remain at the table in uneasy silence. The girls, watching from the kitchen, snicker under their pajama shirts.

A narrow bedroom on a high floor. Krementz (in a rosepeignoir) sits up in bed eating burnt toast, reading from her composition book, and rapid-transcribing on a portable typewriter balanced across her knees. Zeffirelli, beside her on the mattress, naked (as usual), flips manifesto-pages, bristling at the numerous, red correction-marks. She smokes a cigarette, he smokes another skinny cigar.

Zeffirelli does a double-take. He points across the room and says false-modestly:

Krementz looks up.

INSERT:

A small, black and white television set on a rolling cart at the foot of the bed. On screen: an anchorman delivers a bulletin, then introduces footage -- subtitled: “Last Night” -- of a battalion of riot-police (billy-clubs and plastic shields) facing off against a legion of student protesters (paving stones and broken bottles). On a plastic crate in the small space between the two transfixed, opposing groups: another chessboard. In a sudden burst of attack/counter-attack, Zeffirelli and a riot-police commander trade pawns, bishops, rooks, etc. then pause. (A superimposed chessboard diagram re-caps the moves that lead up to this caesura.)

68.68.

Zeffirelli moves his queen diagonally seven spaces to capture the queen of his rival. The collected military personnel and young radicals gasp in unison, grimace, groan, and whisper nervously. (A flashbulb pops.) Zeffirelli says discreetly:

The riot-police commander, unfazed, protects his king with an unforeseen, defensive side-step. Zeffirelli, surprised, nods with guarded admiration. (A super-title blinks: “Stalemate!”)

Krementz looks to Zeffirelli. He has resumed bristling over her corrections. He points:

Krementz leans over and squints to study the page.

69.69.

Zeffirelli is insulted. The doorbell rings. Krementz gets out of bed, leaves the room, and closes the door behind her. Muffled voices echo through the wall/door. Zeffirelli frowns, anxious. He strains to eavesdrop. He bites a fingernail. Krementz comes back in and returns to the bed. Zeffirelli stares at her, waiting. Finally:

70.70.

Long pause. Zeffirelli says genuinely (perhaps growing up ever so slightly in this moment):

Krementz nods, flattered, and points at the page in her typewriter. Zeffirelli peers at it. Krementz covers it with her hand. Zeffirelli returns to his manifesto. Krementz types one more short paragraph.

The front room of theSans Blague bubbles over with caffeinated/inebriated twenty-year-olds chattering shoulder to shoulder along counters, booths, and banquettes. Classical music blasts on the jukebox. A crowd hovers over a pinball machine decorated with question marks, infinity symbols, atoms/molecules and the caption: “Modern Physics!” A waiter speed-navigates

71.71.

through the circus with a rattling tray triple-tiered with double-espressos extended high above his head.

(Note: each young patron of the café carries a highbrow/semi- unreadable paperback of some variety at all times without exception.)

TITLE:

Last Spring

Zeffirelli assumes the narration:

INSERT:

An illuminated jukebox title-strip labeled G-7: “Dansez le ‘Craze’”. Zeffirelli continues in voiceover:

MONTAGE:

A hiss, a scratch, then the first note of a French pop- instrumental (an uptempo, beepy/jingly fugue). The camera dollies among undergraduates with brush-cuts, mop-tops, pageboys, and frizzy perms. The boys wear topcoats, two button tweeds, and skinny high-waters. The girls wear knitted mini- dresses, ballet flats, and leotards.

A standing foursome of boys and girls talk simultaneously in gibberish. One makes a symbolic hand shape followed by a wiggling gesture. The others laugh.

A balustraded, low-ceilinged mezzanine-loge at the top of a spiral staircase. Themenu du jour specials on the wall- chalkboard have been rubbed out and carefully vandalized into: “French Tongue on Shit Sandwich.” Juliette (seen earlier standing on the tapestry in the dean’s office) sits at a table

72.72.

checking her make-up in her compact mirror as she addresses a pack of admirers/detractors.

Pairs of opposing cliques go head to head at backgammon, Risk, and crossword puzzles; vie at competitive domino toppling (winding/climbing/fanning arrangements which click-clack their way through the café doing tricks with matchsticks, shoelaces, and sparkling water); and -- here we see Zeffirelli, Vittel, and Mitch-mitch each at a separate board/game -- play chess.

Mitch-mitch, listless and distracted, re-reads a well-creased letter, then moves a pawn and taps the game-clock timer. His opponent immediately takes the piece. Pause.

Mitch-mitch tips over his king, crumples his letter, pulls on his topcoat, and leaves the table. He re-enters frame outside the plate-glass window (late afternoon, drizzle), lighting a cigarette as he jogs through criss-crossing traffic before descending into the Flop Quarter Métro station.

Zeffirelli watches from his chessboard, concerned. He looks to Vittel. Vittel shrugs. Zeffirelli snatches up the crumpled paper from Mitch-mitch’s table and unfolds it.

INSERT:

An official summons red-stamped on flimsy, blue card-stock. Across the top: Report for Compulsory Martial Chores.

Night. Two tables frown at each other from corners of the front- room. Juliette checks her make-up in her compact mirror.

TITLE:

73.73.

One Month Later

A general gasp: conversation in the rest of the café has fallen silent, and everyone is listening to the Mitch-mitch debate. A whispered aside from a pre-law student at another table:

Zeffirelli, recovering from the affront, snaps back at Juliette:

74.74.

A new voice interrupts off-screen:

Everyone turns. Mitch-mitch is standing alone in the open door- way at the end of the crowded bar, in front of the crowded terrasse. He is dressed in a long, blue, floor-length cape, a navy beret, and blue commando trousers tucked into muddy combat- boots. He carries an enormous blue-camo duffel-sack over his shoulder. The eyes of every customer are now glued to him. Zeffirelli stammers then finds his tongue:

In close-up: Mitch-mitch is a wounded soldier (psychologically). Krementz returns in voiceover with the following information:

A cement-box garrison dormitory dimly lit from the flies. Three- tiered bunkbeds delineate the upstage backdrop (cinder block and timber joist). Downstage, left: an industrial drum-heater idles, bubbling. Downstage, right: a five seat latrine with noisy pipes. A single, bare lightbulb hangs, suspended, above centerstage.

On cots and footlockers: eighteen cadets in white boxer shorts, tucked-in white undershirts, and shower slippers. A drill- sergeant, dressed in the same garments with the addition of a whitekepi and gun-belt, leans on a bunk ladder, sipping from a plastic mess-kit teacup. He speaks at a stage-whisper to the rapt troop:

75.75.

The drill-sergeant motions across his costume (as indicated, his skivvies).

The cadets scramble to their bunks, shouting a ritual of call- and-response/nighttime orders (”Hup! Ho! Hut!” “Lights out! Blankets on!” “Covers tucked! Eyes shut! Pray your prayers!”), followed by a general murmur of grateful, holy, reverential, hushed muttering, signs-of-crossings, and “Amens” -- then silence. (The drill-sergeant ascends a spiral staircase and retires to an upstairs desk and cot seen only in silhouette against a glowing, white rectangle.)

A top-bunk cadet rustles under his sheets.

CADET #1 Psst.

Long pause. The top-bunk cadet rustles again and props himself up on an elbow.

CADET #1 Psst. Mitch-mitch. Psst.

Pause, again. The top-bunk cadet sits up fully.

CADET #1 Psst. Mitch-mitch. What do you want to be?

Mitch-mitch (portrayed in this scene by a theatre-actor with well-trained “instrument”), one bunk-tier below, leans out, reluctant/annoyed.

CADET #1 What do you want to be, Mitch-mitch?

Mitch-mitch sighs. As he answers, resigned, the rest of the cadets creep out of their cots and return to their earlier positions, listening.

76.76.

CADET #2 Will that make you be satisfied?

CADET #1 And you, Robouchon?

CADET #3 I have no choice. I’ll work for my father’s glass factory. Someone has to take over.

CADET #1 It’s normal.

CADET #2 Vaugirard. What’s your plan?

CADET #4 I suppose, I’ll continue to be an attractive wastrel, like my cousins on both sides of the family.

CADET #1 CADET #3

Your cousins are the best. I love your cousins.

No answer. Mitch-mitch repeats the question:

Morisot, bespectacled, timid, pale, answers softly from the bottom bunk:

CADET #1 (hesitates) What’d he say?

77.77.

CADET #2 He said, “A protester.”

CADET #3 (puzzled) What does he mean?

CADET #1 I don’t know.

CADET #4 (doubtful) I thought Morisot was going to be a professor of geological chemistry.

Mitch-mitch cranes upside-down to examine Morisot. He says, surprised:

A voice in the darkness, across the room, hushes sharply:

VOICE Shhh!

Cadet #1 bolts up on his knees. He shout-whispers, angry:

CADET #1 Who said, “Shhh!”

Silence. Morisot speaks again, quiet but determined:

Morisot slides open the window next to his cot, and discreetly slips out into the night. A beat, then a sickening thud. Mitch- mitch gasps, astonished, and shouts:

78.78.

Mitch-mitch drops and tucks into Morisot’s bunk. He screams, pained:

Other cadets scramble to join Mitch-mitch as he sticks his head out and looks down.

CADET #1 Is he dead?

CADET #2 How far did he fall?

CADET #3 It rained last night. Maybe the mud’s still soft.

The stage-lights begin to slowly, slowly dim as Mitch-mitch’s voice, diminishing in volume, softer and softer, repeats:

The café, exactly as we left it. Mitch-mitch crosses the silent room to join his friends. Zeffirelli, confused and moved, stands up and kisses Mitch-mitch on both cheeks. Mitch-mitch embraces Zeffirelli. He turns to face the larger group. He steps up onto a chair and points to a tricolor patch on his chest the shape of a shield which depicts a flying bullet and the words: Mustard Region Cadets. He says simply:

79.79.

Mitch-mitch rips off the patch and ignites it with a Zippo. The room (including Juliette) gasps again. Zeffirelli, stunned, mouth open, begins to slowly clap. Juliette joins him. Vittel claps faster. A wave of thunderous applause spreads through the room.

Above the jukebox: Juliette pulls down a glossy headshot of a heartthrob (blue eyes, bronze skin, golden hair) taped to a mirrored-wall and starts to replace it with a glossy headshot of a public intellectual (round spectacles, woolen scarf, pipe). Zeffirelli, edgy, pops up at her side:

Zeffirelli, stony, drops in a twenty-centime coin and punches two buttons. Another hit French single (high-tenor vocals and expansive, orchestral backing) gusts into the room. Spinning lights circle. Immediately: the café is dancing -- and, at the chorus, singing,fortissimo, in unison with “Tip-top”.

Zeffirelli and Juliette stare at each other coolly, then drift apart into their respective crowds. Krementz resumes the role of narrator:

80.80.

From one corner: Juliette watches Zeffirelli reflected in her compact mirror. From the opposite: Zeffirelli studies Juliette in a reflection of a reflection of an angled ceiling-mirror. He puffs on his skinny cigar.

MONTAGE:

Thecour of a dilapidated residential hotel. A thick-set gardienne framed in the upper-section of a Dutch door gossips darkly with an amiable gendarme and a group of elderly, intrigued neighbors (eye-doctor sunglasses, mesh grocery-sacks).

An impasse alongside the Sans Blague. A squad of disorderly police-goons dumps barrels of coffee beans into a sewer-canal.

A mansard platform on a tall building above thequai. Vittel and two other headphoned student disc-jockeys with cigarettes in their mouths speed-talk at a microphone inside a tiny, ramshackle transmission booth next to a jerry-rigged broadcasting tower twenty feet high.

A long, formica-top table in a kitchen with tiled walls and hanging copper pots and pans. Two dozen grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins eat slices of an enormous, thingalettethe size of a bicycle wheel. Mitch-mitch, in pajamas, wears a paper gold-foil crown on his head.

An idle librarian staring into space. Behind her: rows and aisles of shelves, stacks, racks, carts -- all completely empty and desolate.

81.81.

The steps of the university lunchroom. A line of students, arms- linked, lunch-trays brandished like shields, obstructs a bank of entrance-doors.

The facade of a student-housing pension. Female students in crowded windows lower improvised ropes down to male students hanging from the ledges below.

One half-block of a paving-stone avenue between and below facing banks of imposing, cut-stone apartment buildings. On one end: a barricade of school-desks, chairs, bookcases, globes, microscopes, and typewriters piled fifteen feet high. On the other end: compact cars, burned black, still smoldering, on their sides, upside-down, standing on end, split in two, etc. On opposing flanks: two cafés, theFleurs du Maland the Americain. A thread of gutter-water runs down the center of the road like a stream through a canyon. Métro station: Bootblack District.

Student protestors sit in clusters on the piled rubble and mutilated cars; crouch on and dangle from storefront awnings and ledges; direct traffic (one of them, anyway). Innocent bystanders (old and young) stand on balconies and in open windows; wait on tables and eat/drink at theterrassesof the two cafés; pose for a tourist-family picture (T-shirt: “Liberty Junior High Boys Track”). A platoon of riot-police stands in formation beyond the barricade, fifty meters down the street. Mitch-mitch and Vittel occupy the middle of the improvised barrier -- near Juliette, who sits perched alone on the top of a folding ladder. Each (protesters, bystanders, riot-police) holds a pale pink pamphlet with “LeSans Blague:a Manifesto” sloganed across its letter-pressed cover. They all read intently, periodically turning pages.

82.82.

Zeffirelli, anxious, lingers among his comrades, attending their reactions (especially Juliette’s). He fidgets with his skinny cigar. A voice booms over a loudspeaker:

Zeffirelli, Mitch-mitch, and Vittel dart away to a metal cart with a chessboard on it (black pieces only). Zeffirelli sits down on a cane-backed dining room chair. He studies his options for a fraction of a second, then moves a knight against his invisible opponent. Mitch-mitch quickly writes in chalk on a small slate and thrusts it up into the sky on a long, skinny pole.

The riot-police. A communications signaler at the spearhead sits at his own metal cart operating a remote field-telephone system. He raises a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

INSERT:

The binoculars’ P.O.V. The slate peeking over the top of the school-desk barricade reads: ”Kt. to Q.B.3”.

The signaler relays a message into his handset receiver:

The situation room at the EnnuiMairie(long conference table, tall leather chairs, numerous television sets). A cabinet aide listening on the other end of the telephone line nods and scribbles on an official memo-pad. He presents the message to: the mayor (seventy-five, white moustache, rolled up shirtsleeves/unbuttoned waistcoat), seated at his own chessboard (white pieces only), surrounded by a team of political advisors and game-strategy analysts.

The mayor studies the message briefly (counsel peering over his shoulders), then flicks it aside and looks at the board, hands on hips. He puts his fingers to his own knight, pauses while his team murmurs support/uncertainty, then makes an assertive move.

The riot police. The signaler nods and shouts the capture into a microphone, blasting from the loudspeaker:

83.83.

Zeffirelli. He removes his knight from the board, folds his hands, and concentrates. Mitch-mitch and Vittel resume reading the pink pamphlet. Zeffirelli, distracted, asks:

Mitch-mitch and Vittel answer simultaneously, eyes glued to pages:

VITTEL MITCH-MITCH

Final chapter. Last paragraph.

Zeffirelli waits. (The sun sets. Street lights blink on.) Mitch- mitch and Vittel close their pamphlets and nod slowly with intrigued admiration, deeply thoughtful. Just as they begin to speak: Juliette’s voice barks sharply from the top of her ladder:

Zeffirelli, Mitch-mitch, and Vittel look up. Juliette descends to the ground, fuming.

VITTEL MITCH-MITCH

Don’t you? What’s wrong with it?

Other student protesters begin to gather around. Juliette opens to a marked page and shouts:

Members of the growing audience open their pink pamphlets and quickly turn to the indicated paragraph. Juliette runs her finger along the text, rapid-muttering unintelligibly to herself under her breath until she arrives at the pertinent passage -- which she then declaims with angry, emphatic, bitter contempt. Krementz, in voiceover, drowns her out:

84.84.

Juliette flips to another marked passage.

Juliette rapid-mutters, then declaims again under Krementz’s:

Juliette flips to another marked passage.

Juliette rapid mutters/declaims a third time. Krementz:

Juliette, having finished her quotations, now holds up the pamphlet, outraged, and gives her critique:

Mitch-mitch and Vittel, unswayed, comment admiringly to Zeffirelli:

MITCH-MITCH VITTEL

That’s the best section of the My favorite part, maybe. whole pamphlet.

85.85.

The assembled group now turns to, previously unseen, just outside the inner circle: Krementz, taking notes in her composition book. She looks slightly sheepish. Juliette objects:

Mitch-mitch and Vittel respond immediately and simultaneously:

VITTEL MITCH-MITCH

No such thing. Doesn’t exist. Journalistic neutrality is a

discredited concept.

Juliette, disgusted, rips her copy of the manifesto to shreds. Zeffirelli is horrified.

Zeffirelli points at the scraps on the ground. He explains:

Juliette crouches down and digs among the bits of paper. She finds one with a handwritten dedication on it. She reads it, then tucks it into her shirt pocket.

Juliette checks her make-up in her compact mirror. Zeffirelli looks wounded. Mitch-mitch and Vittel pat him on the back. Krementz, eye-balling Juliette in disapproval, says in voiceover:

Nevertheless, Krementz interrupts herself out loud:

86.86.

Juliette pauses, frozen in her mirror. The crowd of student protesters, eager and intrigued, draws closer, gossiping at a whisper. Juliette snaps her compact shut and says, confrontational but respectful:

Mitch-mitch and Vittel respond simultaneously again:

MITCH-MITCH VITTEL

I wouldn’t say that. Some do. Some don’t.

The signaler’s voice booms over the loudspeaker again:

Zeffirelli looks back and forth between Krementz and Juliette. Long pause (more whispered gossip). Juliette shrugs, indifferent:

87.87.

Juliette turns away to go -- then (on second thought) returns, suspicious:

Juliette’s eyes darken. Aside, the pre-law student announces in a hushed voice:

Juliette, derisive, demands:

88.88.

The signaler booms over the loudspeaker again once more:

Juliette, exceedingly flustered, blurts harshly:

The entire avenue (miraculously) goes dead silent. Krementz has the full attention of every protester and bystander in the vicinity. She blushes bright red. In an instant: her eyes fill with fierce tears. She says quietly, dignified:

Zeffirelli explains rapid-fire, firmly, gently to the group:

Zeffirelli turns to Krementz. Krementz bows, accepting the compliment. Zeffirelli asks, concerned:

89.89.

Krementz stares at Zeffirelli, surprised. She hesitates. She looks to Juliette. Juliette’s lips part, but she does not speak. Krementz says softly:

The situation room. The cabinet aide, holding the telephone receiver, says to the mayor at his chessboard:

The mayor frowns. He picks up a game clock and looks at the timer. He shrugs.

Krementz in close-up, eyes still filled with tears:

Juliette in close-up, now crying, as well:

Krementz takes Juliette’s hand and clutches it briefly. She nods and smiles. Juliette looks upset and uncomfortable. Zeffirelli, beside and between them, is powerless, puzzled, and moved. A volley of tear-gas canisters, flash grenades, and sound bombs flies through the air behind the trio, bursting, blazing, banging, sparking, popping, etc. Protesters scatter away in all directions. Krementz dismisses the display with a reassuring:

Zeffirelli and Juliette, slightly awed, remain in place with Krementz. The phalanx of riot-police surges over and around the barricade, flooding the street, swinging clubs, firing rubber bullets, deflecting paving stones and flying bottles, etc.

90.90.

Ignoring the entire commotion, Krementz points at Juliette and says to Zeffirelli:

Zeffirelli and Juliette grimace, embarrassed. Krementz points at, nearby, a checker-striped (matching Juliette’s helmet) motorcycle leaning on its kickstand. Zeffirelli and Juliette turn to look at each other. Juliette says openly:

Pause. Krementz says politely, with a shrug:

Automatically, in unison, Zeffirelli and Juliette jump on the motorcycle. He wraps his arms around her waist. She produces the ignition key from her pocket, inserts/twists it, kicks the starter, and guns the engine. One of the student protesters rolls aside a mesh-steel bin filled with gym equipment revealing: a gap in the barricade. Mitch-mitch and Vittel scramble through, followed by a dozen of their shouting comrades -- and Juliette (with her passenger) on the motorcycle. They shoot away, up the avenue.

Krementz stands alone at the center of the commotion.

INSERT:

A desktop, a coffee cup, an ashtray. Krementz’s hands snap open her composition book -- revealing, in the process, a glimpsed, unexpected stray entry (in four colors of ball-point pen) upside- down on the last page. She immediately flips back and rotates the journal to study it.

91.91.

The facade of an old building of modest flats. The camera zooms out from Krementz reading/smoking, lamp-lit in her bedroom window, to reveal the windows of her neighbors (cooking, ironing, vacuuming, glued to television sets and radios).

The motorcycle racing down a wide, eerily vacant boulevard. Zeffirelli’s voice:

SPLIT-SCREEN:

A pair of slow-motion portraits (eyes directly into camera). On the left, Krementz, body wrapped in a damp towel, hair pinned and netted, pearls; on the right, Juliette, shirtless in a brassiere, face smeared with cold cream, plastic shower cap. They stare at themselves in the mirror.

The motorcycle, another angle. Zeffirelli, clutching Juliette, closes his eyes. Smoke and embers swirl from his skinny cigar.

92.92.

A six-bed sleeping quarters with the lights out. Zeffirelli and Juliette sit cross-legged, naked, facing each other on the sheets of a top bunk just below the ceiling. They talk rapidly at a whisper, giggling, touching, sharing junk food and a Coke. In the open bathroom door, a student in a dressing gown brushes out her hair. Slowly: the interior background dissolves away revealing stars, planets, the universe, infinity, etc. A tiny comet inches across the sky-scape.

INSERT:

Extreme close-up: the end of Zeffirelli’s stray entry. Too scribbly to read. Krementz’s voice returns:

The tiny transmission booth next to the broadcasting tower above the quai. Juliette, Vittel, Mitch-mitch, and the two other headphoned student disc-jockeys sit clustered around Zeffirelli (with an open, heavily-corrected-in-red-ink copy of the pink pamphlet in his hands) at the microphone. The familiar French pop song plays in the background as Zeffirelli announces to the radio audience:

An exterior view as Zeffirelli continues the broadcast (inaudible through the sound-proof glass). Up above: an electrical crackle and a bang/pop from the top of the broadcast tower. A dust of falling sparks.

93.93.

INSERT:

The “On Air” light flickers to “Off.”

MONTAGE:

The listening audience at various radios: students at a barricade, riot-police at an armored troop-transport, the professor with his wife in curlers, Zeffirelli’s sisters under a sheet in their bedroom, Paul alone in his kitchen. They adjust their dials, twist their antennae, poke, tap, shake, etc.

(Note: the audio track during the following sequence of shots consists entirely of static interference, sizzling zaps, oscillating warbles, and white noise. No live sound.)

A high, direct-overhead, bird’s-eye view of the transmission booth. A hatch on the side cracks open, and Zeffirelli’s head pokes out and looks up at camera.

INSERT:

The top of the broadcasting tower. A science-project-type dry- cell ignition battery (brand:Éclair Blanche) has been affixed with duct tape and bailing wire to the side of the truss below a whip antenna at the pinnacle of the structure. A pronged wire, loosed from its terminal-post, dances, jolts, and flashes with electrical arcs.

Zeffirelli reaches back inside and produces a pair of needle- nose pliers. He says (silent):

Zeffirelli briskly, immediately, scales the tower, up out of frame. Juliette, Mitch-mitch, and Vittel, alarmed, burst out of the booth and shout urgently (silent) at Zeffirelli:

VITTEL MITCH-MITCH

Stop! What are you doing? Are you crazy? Don’t be

stupid!

Zeffirelli, cheerily ignoring his friends’ warnings, reaches the top of the flimsy broadcast tower. The structure bends and sways slightly as he quickly pinches the prong of the live wire with the pliers and re-inserts it into its terminal-post.

94.94.

(Note: static ends, replaced by “Tip-top” with high-tenor vocals, expansive, orchestral backing, etc. Still no live sound.)

Juliette, Mitch-mitch, and Vittel stare up at Zeffirelli, tense with concern, involuntarily mouthing the words to the pop song. Zeffirelli waves down at them and gives a salute, reassuring, then looks out across the twinkling cityscape. He withdraws a fresh, skinny cigar from his breast pocket, holds it with the pliers, touches it to the gently sparking battery terminal, and puffs. He tucks the pliers under his belt. He smokes and smiles.

The battery explodes. A support cable snaps. Zeffirelli hangs on as the tower collapses.

A Citroën sedan. Driver: woman, late middle-age, tired. The husband and wife (Zeffirelli’s parents) sit together on one side of the back seat, arms intertwined, clasping hands, stone-faced. They wear pajamas/nightgown with belted overcoats. Krementz explains:

The taxi stops. (A neon red cross glows outside the window.) The husband, startled, counts out coins from his pajama-top pocket. He and his wife exit. Thechauffeusedrives on, passengerless.

MONTAGE:

A rapid-sequence of inserts. First: the original negative of a reportage photograph depicting Zeffirelli at chessboard, skinny cigar clenched in smiling teeth, dazzling/mischievious eyes flashing up to camera, caught mid-move as he slides his black

95.95.

queen seven spaces, blurred by motion, to capture his rival’s white one. Filling the frame all around him: a platoon of armed and armored standing riot-police. They react, gasping, groaning, grimacing, wincing, etc.

Next: the same image (now a positive print) boxed in grease- pencil on a contact sheet surrounded by the sequence of exposures taken during the moments before/after.

Next: the front page of a newspaper with the same image (in dotted halftone) and the caption below it: “Boy, skilled chess player/activist in youth movement, dies.”

Next: a snapshot of a gang of posing teenagers. One, front-and- center, wears a T-shirt silk-screened with the same image.

Finally: a magazine advertisement using the same image (airbrushed and colorized) to sell skinny cigars (branded: “Toscano Zeffirelli”).

A crane on a barge alongside a footbridge clanks and ratchets as it hoists the demolished broadcasting antenna out of the dark water. An assembly of onlookers watches from the bank below a street-sign:Quai Blasé.

INSERT:

A chessboard. It leans upright against the footbridge railing, encircled with candles, flowers, paving-stones, scribbled messages, a “Tip-top” record, and the above-mentioned clipping (same image of Zeffirelli) held in place by a black queen as a paperweight. Newsprint rustles slightly in the breeze.

The camera dollies away from the impromptu shrine to reveal Juliette (in Zeffirelli’s transparent rain-slicker), Vittel (arm in a sling), and Mitch-mitch (in National Duty-obligation uniform, duffel over his shoulder) watching the river, backs to camera, as the grey surface is peppered by a drizzling, afternoon rain.

Krementz’s bedroom. On the television set: riot-police dismantle abandoned barricades; firemen douse smoldering vehicles; a milkman carries fresh bottles in two metal baskets. (A super- title blinks: “Strikers Yield!”)

96.96.

Krementz (in her rosepeignoir) sits up in bed, portable typewriter on her knees, staring out the window. She wears the gas-mask. Faint sound of shouting children in playground below.

Krementz sits alone at her desk eating burnt toast. A knock, then the door creaks open, and Howitzer looks inside. Krementz points at a manuscript on her desk. Howitzer enters and sits. He reads, she eats.

97.97.

Story #3 (pages 98 to 128)

98.98.

INSERT:

The proof-print of a diner’s chronicle in the Tastes and Smells Section. A line-drawing depicts a dinner plate with a pen on one side, a pencil and eraser on the other, and a ruled/margined writing-paper placemat underneath.

TITLE:

Kitchen Accounts “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner” by Roebuck Wright

The set of a talk show with three swivel-armchairs and an ashtray on a pedestal. The host (white): forty, beige/check three-piece, longish hair parted on the side. The guest (black): fifty, open collar/silk scarf, burnt-orange safari suit. He is Roebuck Wright. He speaks in the drawl (languid, literary) of the Gothic American South. Both men smoke.

99.99.

Off-stage: an actor stands at a sponsor display-table stacked with tins of whitening dentifrice. He looks slightly startled, then smiles awkwardly and nods. The host continues:

A long, institutional-style corridor in a massive, seventeenth century building. Dim overhead light. Worn, grey linoleum floors. Dingy, chipped, cracked, yellowing, thick-gloss painted walls. Camera leads Roebuck Wright (fifteen years younger, dressed in a black suit and necktie) down the hall, shoes clip- clopping, eyeballs searching left and right, lost.

INSERT:

100.100.

Overhead angle: a slip of a paper pinched tightly in Roebuck Wright’s fingers. It is a menu for a nine course dinner with a map (on the verso) of the labyrinthine compound.

Roebuck Wright, same corridor. Camera now follows him.

Roebuck Wright makes a wrong turn, doubles-back, then U-turns, repeatedly checking room numbers against his map.

MONTAGE:

Roebuck Wright pokes his head into the doorways of various departmental offices. First: the crimes-in-progress dispatch center (bank of phones, radio operator, wall map of the city pocked with urgent alarms and alerts).

Next: a training gymnasium with cadets in police-issue exercise leotards performing fitness regimes (pugilist sparring, rope climbing, medicine ball throwing).

Next: the target-end (bullets whizzing) of a marksmanship practice range.

101.101.

Next: the disguises check-out dispensary (wigs, fake beards, ecclesiastical vestments).

Finally: an apparently unattended booking room. Roebuck Wright pauses, momentarily mesmerized. He wanders slowly inside. He stands at the door of a locked holding cell (hand-labeled “Chicken Coop #1”).

A previously-unseen small, wiry, bespectacled number-cruncher sleeping on a bunk inside the cell rustles slightly. Roebuck Wright retreats a step, startled. The number-cruncher looks up with frightened eyes. He says softly:

The number-cruncher looks skeptical. Roebuck Wright asks gently, indicating the sign:

Off-screen: a theatrical cough/throat-clearing. Roebuck Wright only now notices a previously-unseen platoon of guards (smoking, snacking, reading, toothpicking, all armed with cylindrical- magazine submachine guns) watching him evenly from around the room. Roebuck Wright hesitates, apologetic.

102.102.

The number-cruncher watches, puzzled, as Roebuck Wright ducks away. The camera booms down to the wooden baseboard below the number-cruncher’s bunk:

INSERT:

A spaghetti of carved graffiti. One message, only faintly visible, seems to read: “Roebuck Wright was here.”

A narrow hallway on a high floor. A minuscule elevator on the far end opens. Roebuck Wright emerges and approaches.

The camera pans to a pair of double-doors discreetly labeled: “Privé”.

The door creaks open and Roebuck Wright peers into:

A rustic, dark-wood chamber. Wide-plank floors. Low ceilings supported by thick beams. Heavy, ornate, carved chairs and sideboard. Lace curtains. Rugs in crimson. A carefully-set table which seats: a sturdy but elegant eighty-year-old woman and two fifty-five-year-old men. One is old for his age, bent, wrinkled, ashen, and ghoulish. The other is young for his age, short statured/broad shouldered, dressed in a well-tailored dark suit with a shot of red thread sewn into the lapel. He is the Commissaire.Across the room, next to a young policeman with an apron over his uniform, a chef (French-Korean, tortoise-shell spectacles, haircut with sharp bangs, fifty) stands lingering in the kitchen doorway.

The entire group stares at camera/Roebuck Wright.

TheCommissaire checks a clock on the mantelpiece (time: two minutes after nine). He motions to a single, empty chair at the table. Roebuck Wright, sheepish, approaches, sits, and says gently:

103.103.

Roebuck Wright bows to the old woman. Her smile exudes a powerful maternal geniality. TheCommissaireindicates the other seated man:

As theCommissaire’s childhood friend chuckles to himself, his dentures loudly click. Roebuck Wright bows again. The Commissairepoints across the room.

The patrolman/waiter briskly fetches up a tray of small aluminum thermoses. He delivers them to the table just as a boy (French- North African, age ten) in a blue lab coat enters through a side door. He carries a carton filled with files and documents. He is Gigi. A police academy cadet/nanny trails behind him. The Commissaire,vaguely suspicious, explains as they pass:

Gigi pauses to shake hands while balancing boxes. Roebuck Wright explains in voiceover:

104.104.

FLASHBACK:

TheCommissaire and a younger Gigi walk together down a dock alongside the hull of an ocean liner. Stevedores hoist crates. A mist drifts across the planks.

The younger Gigi rides with his head sticking out the window of a speeding police car. Sirens blast. TheCommissaireis at the wheel.

The younger Gigi carefully presses the enormous, ink-coated fingers of a hulking thug onto a blank arrest-form page. The Commissaire(observing) looks pleased.

A meek shopkeeper gives a description as the younger Gigi finishes a sketch then flips it around to show: a wild-eyed, crooked-toothed maniac. The shopkeeper nods. TheCommissaire (observing) looks pleased again.

Split-screen: on the left, the younger Gigi taps a signal on a telegraph machine; on the right, theCommissairelistens and records.

(Note: electronic beeps accompany a title sliding across the bottom of the screen which reads: “*--* *- *--* *- P A P A”.)

The younger Gigi and theCommissairestand in front of the crimes-in-progress wall map, studying alarms and alerts.

105.105.

Gigi and theCommissaire hold hands.

Gigi lingering next to Roebuck Wright. He says, pointed:

Gigi and his minder exit through a secret door into a cramped spiral stairwell. The chef now stands at the elbow of the Commissaire.

The party of four all look up to the chef. The chef salutes and stands at ease, calm and confident. TheCommissaire nods “begin”. The chef disappears. The diners unscrew their thermoses and decant doses of a cloudy, lilac-colored liquid. They sip their cocktails. Roebuck Wright, already enchanted, explains in voiceover:

106.106.

INSERT:

A black-gloved hand activates a stopwatch.

(Note: each segment of the following sequence portrays a different scene occurring during the same approximately simultaneous one-minute timespan, initiated by the same sound: the stopwatch start. Loud ticking, amplified and reverberant, continues throughout.)

MONTAGE:

1. In the kitchen: the chef blazes up an armory of cooktop-fires and furnace-flames, then sets to work: chopping, stirring, poaching, braising, flipping, folding, salting, spicing, etc.

2. In the nursery (a garret playroom decorated with books and paints, trunks overflowing with costumes, a police rocking- horse, etc.): Gigi and the cadet/nanny sit on tiny chairs at a diminutive table as they examine the stacks of borrowed paperwork.

The camera tilts up to the vaulted glass ceiling. A pane inches sideways in its frame with a nearly silent squeak. A black- gloved hand gripping a medium-calibre automatic pistol (muzzle- mounted with a silencer) cranes into the room. The extended barrel slants toward the floor.

The camera tilts back down. The cadet/nanny stands up and exits frame. He returns with an ashtray and lights a cigarette. He puffs on it -- then, suddenly: he and Gigi both look to the ceiling/skylight.

The camera tilts back up with a whip. The gun fires (a silencer “thwoop”). Off-camera: a thump, a thud, and a thwack.

107.107.

The camera tilts back down. The cadet/nanny is now dead in his tiny chair, shot through the top of the head, still bleeding liberally onto the strewn depositions etc. Gigi is gone.

A rope drops into frame from above. The chauffeur (a bent-nosed former heavyweight prize-fighter with a cauliflower ear and stitches on his forehead) who slides down and drops to the floor wears a grey cap; long, grey, double-breasted, black-belted coat; grey breeches; ballet slippers; and a white handkerchief tied over his face like a bandit. A coiled cord hangs over his shoulder. He darts/pads out of the shot. Off-camera: a scrambling hubbub.

The chauffeur re-enters carrying Gigi, trussed like a chicken, blindfolded, and gagged. He grips him at the waist. He takes a deep breath, bends his knees, then hurls the boy like a spinning circus tumbler straight up, through the ceiling skylight, out of the building. The chauffeur then takes the end of the rope and clips it to a metal ring strapped to his chest. He waits.

3. In the dining room: a small, red indicator-lightbulb mounted on the sideboard blinks on. The patrolman/waiter frowns slightly. He opens a cupboard door, withdraws a telephone, brings it to the dinner table, and plugs it into a socket flush- mounted on the burnished oak.

TheCommissaire picks up the receiver and signals for his mother to pick up the extension.

TheCommissaire and his mother listen, stone-faced. She takes notes. Roebuck Wright exchanges an anxious look withChou-fleur.

INSERT:

Maman’s transcription (subtitled in English):

As you know by now, we have kidnapped your son and absconded to a secure location which you will never discover. Release (or execute) the Abacus, and the little boy will be safely returned to your custody. Failure to do so by sun-up will result in your son’s violent death.

108.108.

TheCommissaire hangs up, puzzled. He jolts to his feet and darts out of the room.

A hand-drawn cel-animation shot vividly illustrating the rooftop of thepréfecture headquarters in the bright moonlight. A stocky kidnapper is positioned next to the open skylight window. A thin kidnapper stands inside a large, black wicker basket.

The somersaulting boy (Gigi) flies up through the skylight. The stocky kidnapper catches him in his arms, quickly dumps him into the basket, and climbs in after. The thin kidnapper pulls a valve-chain, igniting a propane torch. The basket (now revealed in a slow zoom-out to be attached to a pitch black, stealth hot air balloon) rises -- carrying below it: the chauffeur, swaying gently as the balloon travels up and completely disappears into the night.

Early morning. A light snow falls on the doorstep of a low rent, residential hotel.

TITLE:

Three Days Earlier

The door opens, and the number-cruncher pokes out and looks up and down the sidewalk, nervous. He emerges in hat and overcoat carrying a yellow suitcase clutched to his chest. He walks briskly across the deserted street, through a narrow passageway, down an alley to: a parked, late forties (running boards, wire wheels) Citroën sedan. He gets in, tucks the suitcase beside him, and puts the key into the ignition. The motor whinnies, coughs, and sputters -- but fails to start. In the back seat, a policeman rises into view, pistol fixed on the back of the number-cruncher’s head. The number-cruncher looks in the rearview mirror, then slowly raises his hands into the air. All around the vehicle: a dozen additional officers appear from behind and beneath various hiding places (trash can, window ledge, rain barrel, horse cart, coal chute). A paddy-wagon reverses into frame with a screech. The number-cruncher is whisked out of the Citroën, handcuffed, and swept up into the prisoner transport. A pair of iron doors slams shut.

109.109.

Suddenly, a barrage of machine gun fire perforates the paddy- wagon, the Citroën, the rain barrel, the horse cart, the coal chute, most of the windows of the surrounding buildings, and the bodies of a number of the assembled policemen. The surviving officers return fire.

The talk show. Roebuck Wright says, aside, to his host:

110.110.

INSERT:

A brief memo on “French Dispatch” letterhead. It reads (echoed by Howitzer himself in voiceover):

Dear Mr. Wright, While I regret we are unable to publish either of these specific pieces, I would be very pleased to consider other submissions in the future -- or, if you find yourself in Ennui: telephone me. You seem to know how to write. Signed, A.H. Jr.

Handwritten below the initials: the publisher’s telephone number.

The jail cell. Roebuck Wright (aged thirty) is now on the inside: disheveled, unshaven, gaunt.

A telephone slides through a meal-slot with a shlunk. Roebuck Wright picks up the receiver and dials.

A clock.

TITLE:

Thirty Minutes Later

The camera tilts down to reveal (on the other side of the iron bars): Howitzer himself, seated on a folding chair, sipping a cup of coffee. Roebuck Wright, inside his cell, fills out a form, shakily, in pencil, on a clipboard. He finishes a last sentence and slides the clipboard out the meal-slot. Howitzer picks it up and studies the form.

111.111.

A police guard appears with some paperwork to deliver to Howitzer. He attempts to discreetly interrupt:

Howitzer responds sharply, holding up a finger:

The guard freezes, then evaporates. Howitzer presses on, shuffling pages:

Howitzer holds up a thin, hardback novel titled ”Look Out Below!”. The dust-jacket illustration depicts a carbonated, multicolored highball cocktail (bubbles, swizzle stick, lipstick

112.112.

on the rim). A stamp on the cover reads: “Advance Copy”. Howitzer puts the book through the meal-slot.

Close-up, Roebuck Wright. There are tears in his eyes.

Close-up, Howitzer. He says softly:

The talk show. Roebuck Wright says, matter of fact:

MONTAGE:

A succession of interrogations: a bare-knuckle beating in a warehouse; a head plunged into a tub of ice; a face propelled down the length of a bar, smashing through glasses, bottles, and shakers; an upside-down thug swinging by his ankles from a meat hook; a hulking goon with one eyelid swollen shut drowsily watching a swinging pocket-watch; two policemen and a suspect standing on a tarmac as an inert man is hurled from a low-flying police airplane. The body bounces and tumbles to a bone-crunched halt.

113.113.

The suspect, in handcuffs, looks horrified. The two policemen are stoic. One, notebook in hand, pencil poised, says:

A glowing window at the top-floor of a decrepit apartment building.

Six stories down the semi-crumbling facade, in the entry passageway, a scrawny cat licks an empty saucer. The small, cobblestone square in front, gas lamplit, is surrounded on all sides by rickety buildings of cheap flats. Uneven, narrow, stone staircases ascend from the street corners up to the higher, encirclingrues and passages. A footbridge edges one side of the place, a train truss edges another. Cramped shops (closed) line the sidewalks. Métro station: Hovel District.

Tucked and hidden around the corner: a dense cordon of officers, squad cars, and paddy-wagons. A gathering crowd of locals (the butcher, the fishmonger, the tobacconist, assorted neighborhood characters) quietly nudge and jostle behind a police barrier. Faintly heard, echoing across thequartier: a music hall. Otherwise: silence.

A locksmith’s shop serves as an improvised command center. Ancient floor-plans and elevation-views, foxed and yellowed, cover a long work-counter. A police-band radio hums and buzzes while a voice broadcasts strategic instructions at a whisper. TheCommissaire, flanked by Maman, Chou-fleur, and Roebuck Wright, peers out from the corner of a storefront window through a pair of binoculars.

The camera pans/tilts up back to the glowing window at the top of the decrepit building.

An expansive flat of small rooms, nooks/alcoves, and numerous corridors which connect the top floors of various adjacent buildings.

114.114.

In the sitting room: the chauffeur tunes and strums a guitar. In the dining room: a stout man (cowboy hat, suit/necktie, dark sunglasses) deals cards to a formidable, elderly woman. In the kitchen: a scrawny thief tinkers with a dismantled radio. In the corridor: a trio of hooligans of various dimensions stare into space. In the bathroom: a quartet of showgirls bathe, paint their toenails, and inject morphine. In front of a pad-locked bedroom door: a pair of shoes (oxblood, lace up, the size of Gigi’s feet).

INSERT:

Gigi’s bound hands in dim near-blackness. His fingers clink a beat on a tarnished conduit with a half-centimecoin.

Split-screen. On the right, Gigi in a chair, tied up in a dark cupboard. On the left, one of the junkie showgirls, wrapped in a towel, frowning and listening, as she inclines toward the padlocked door. She chews gum.

Gigi stops clinking. A beat.

115.115.

Pause. Gigi switches gears:

Pause. Gigi tries once more:

Another pause. The showgirl sings a lullaby. She sighs.

INSERT:

TheCommissaire’s hand. He fingers a miniature cameo locket which displays a photograph of the younger Gigi.

The Commissaire paces up and down the room, fretting and contemplating.

116.116.

TheCommissaire stops and murmurs, finally giving in:

Maman(who has clearly been waiting for this moment) immediately signals to an off-screen attendant and produces a collapsible pocket-fork, which she unfolds. TheCommissaireand Chou-fleur follow suit. The patrolman/waiter swiftly covers a workbench below the front window end-to-end with a checkered tablecloth.

The camera dollies away, into the back room (normally a die- casting and lathing workshop), which has been converted into a temporary kitchen. A sheet of pastries warms over a bank of emergency candles. A tray of shucked oysters cools over a bed of dry ice. Small pots boil along radiator pipes. Meat and fowl in states of mid-preparation hang from the ceiling in nets and baskets. Portable ovens and bunsen burners glow and flicker at lowest flame. Nescaffier whisks a froth in a bowl at a perfectly continuous, robotic rate.

The patrolman/waiter pokes his head into the room and nods.

The congregation of police and bystanders outside wait in respectful silence while, seated in the window, behind a pulled blind, in silhouette: theCommissaire, Maman, Chou-fleur, and Roebuck Wright all watch Nescaffier’s shadow enter carrying a serving tray. TheCommissaire rises to his feet and wafts the scent into his nose.

MONTAGE:

Split-screen: on the right, the Commissaire,seated at the workbench table in the locksmith shop,speaks excitedly to Chou- fleur while eating continuously with his left hand only; on the left, a small, speckled, boiled egg split open to reveal layers of whipped yolk mousse.

117.117.

On the right, theCommissaire, seated at the workbench table in the locksmith shop,speaks excitedly toMaman while eating continuously with his left hand only; on the left: a saucer of gibiersand fruits des bois.

On the right, theCommissaire illustrates (using arrows and X’s) his scheme/strategy on one of the building floor plan maps; on the left, smallboulettes shaped and packaged like a bowl of candies.

walls of all three adjacent buildings.

On the right, teenage boys and girls in shooting costumes perch among high chimney tops; on the left, another thermos.

snipers from the local hunting club.

On the right, a quartet of gear-laden climbers in lederhosen scramble in formation up a dark alley; on the left: a roasted bird, boneless, bloody, chopped with potatoes, and served in a paper cup.

district Alpinist society.

On the right, a light clicks on as an enormous wrestler (in a striped singlet) is awakened from slumber by a ringing telephone; on the left, a nicotinepot de crèmewith a white blob on top.

118.118.

The talk show (once again). The host gently cuts in:

T.V. HOST ROEBUCK WRIGHT

Forgive me. I beg your pardon. Heavens, no. Whatever for?

Roebuck Wright stiffens and crosses his arms snugly across his chest. Pause. He counts with five fingers:

T.V. HOST ROEBUCK WRIGHT

-- if you’ll allow me. (Self-reflection is a vice

best conducted in private or not at all.)

119.119.

Silence. Roebuck Wright’s arms drop. He sighs deeply and speaks from some new chamber of his mind/heart:

A tear (perhaps) rolls down Roebuck Wright’s cheek. The T.V. host produces a clean handkerchief and offers it. Roebuck Wright laughs (almost silently) and rolls his eyes as he takes it.

The radio, partially reassembled. It crackles to life. A broadcast voice whispers:

The scrawny thief scrambles out of the kitchen, jolts into the front window, and pulls the curtains slightly ajar. The other members of the gang instinctively flock around him to look out, as well.

The gang’s point-of-view of the square below: empty. Silence. A single cigarette flicks through the air from behind a corner and sparks onto the cobblestones.

120.120.

The chauffeur squints.

TheCommissaire monitoring the radio. He has a sudden intuition. He peers under the locksmith’s blinds. From the top floor flat: one first bang, then a storm of gunfire.

Inside the lair. The apartment has been flash-converted into a fortress/armory. Pistols, rifles, a machine gun on a tripod, plus a military ordnance grenade launcher. Everyone (chauffeur, Stetson, spinster, showgirls, thugs, thief) blasts away at the square below.

Every window shatters. Bricks and mortar explode. Vehicles are blown to smithereens. The teenage snipers shoot back from the rooftops. Police duck for cover. Blood, smoke, falling bodies, screaming, etc.

TheCommissaire, on the floor of the locksmith shop, showered in shards and splinters (with his mother, his best friend, and our reporter) repeats over and over into the radio microphone:

A tiny, old man in a mezzanine listening keenly at a radiator down-pipe while the bullets bang and ricochet outside. He puts on a stethoscope, holds it against the tarnished brass, and begins to take notes.

INSERT:

A scrap of graph paper studded with dots and dashes and a translation below: “S E N D T H E C O O K”.

Above the counter: a final lightbulb pops (gunshot). Silence.

TITLE:

121.121.

One Hour Later

The scarred and battered square. TheCommissaire,hands in the air, steps carefully into view. He carries a loudspeaker. His voice reverberates across the square:

No response. The Commissaire continues:

No response. The Commissaire continues:

The gang conferring all at once at a murmur (“Of course not!” “Are they kidding?” “They think we’re stupid.” etc.) until the chauffeur has a realization. He leans slightly in front of the window and shouts:

TheCommissaire gives a signal. Nescaffier appears. He salutes up to the unseen kidnappers. Aside: he and theCommissaire exchange a look of grim defiance (and fear).

Nescaffier, cast in dark shadow, carries a short tower of boxes and cartons (meat, produce, bread, butter, etc.) as he calmly ascends the winding steps. On top of the stack: a bowl of radishes -- which appear to glow in the darkness.

The gang sits on chairs and stools crowded around a breakfast table set with nine identical dinners on segmented, prison-style

122.122.

plates: a savory winter tart,purée, vivid greens, radishes. Two more plates rest on the sideboard. Nescaffier stands apart, hands folded, apron splattered. In the background: the stove, oven, and sink are a battleground strewn with pots, pans, knives, spoons, etc. In the next room: the thief watches the street from the machine gun’s telescopic sight.

Nescaffier explains humbly:

Nescaffier backs away slightly.

The chauffeur holds up his finger: wait. He quickly prepares a small side-dish with a taste of each item from his own plate and those of the thug and spinster on either side of him. He hands the dish to Nescaffier.

The gang watches as Nescaffier, without hesitation, takes out his ownfourchette de poche and eats everything -- including, finally, a single radish.

The thief appears in the doorway to collect his plate, one of the showgirls (murmuring: “for the little boy”) carries another plate down the corridor, and the rest of the gang attacks their dinners.

The chauffeur pauses suddenly. The others hesitate, watching. The chauffeur says crisply to Nescaffier:

Nescaffier nods, and they all continue their voracious grazing.

The lair as it is breached all at once from three directions: a large hole blasts through one wall, a large drill ruptures through another, the Alpinists drop from a trap door in the ceiling. The apartment fills with climbers and commandos. They all freeze.

123.123.

Strewn across the floor: dead kidnappers and empty plates. Nescaffier lies -- half-unconscious, shivering, but alive -- among them. The commandos immediately jump to his aid, injecting him with three pre-loaded syringes of brightly colored medicine, slipping a tube down his throat, pipetting droplets into his eyes, massaging arms, legs, heart. As they continue these ministrations, the camera moves out of the room, down the corridor, to the open closet door. On the floor: another plate, not quite empty. A trio of radishes remains.

Across the room: one more plate, also with a handful of leftover radishes on it.

Outside: an alarm bell rings. The commandos run to the window and look down into the square.

(Note: the following sequence is rendered entirely in the same hand-drawn cel-animation method and style previously established for the hot air balloon getaway.)

The commandos’ P.O.V: straight down from the window looking at the square. The courtyard gate bursts open, and a two-door Citroën sedan (chauffeur at wheel, Gigi beside him) roars out into the square, smashing through barricades and scattering the crowd of officers and onlookers before rumbling away up a blind impasseunder the street-sign: “Pick-pocket Cul-de-Sac.

TheCommissaire, Maman, Chou-fleur, and Roebuck Wright scramble out of the locksmith shop and leap into their own Citroën. The Commissairecranks the motor. It stutters.

After a double-circling U-turn: the chauffeur and Gigi’s Citroën comes squealing and careening from the cul-de-sac back into the square. The wrestler springs out of a paddy-wagon, side-steps in front of the weaving vehicle, and hurtles himself onto the hood with a whang. The chauffeur looks shocked. Gigi looks ecstatic. The wrestler rips off the windshield wipers and attempts to pull the car apart while also struggling desperately not to fall off. The chauffeur accelerates through a corner and up a different road.

124.124.

TheCommissaire gets the engine going andslams his foot down on the gas pedal, revving up in pursuit of the other vehicle.

Narrow streets. Twisty corners. A tunnel and a bridge. The two cars scream through the sleeping city. At the top of a hill: the chauffeur skids to a stop and jumps out (with the bound Gigi tucked under his arm). He sprints away down a staircase. The wrestler runs after him.

The Commissaire jolts to a stop behind the other car. He and Roebuck Wright bounce out and run after the others (Mamanand Chou-fleur stay behind).

A high-speed foot chase takes them down a drainpipe, across a catwalk, under a scaffolding, over a stone wall -- then back up to the parked cars. The chauffeur shoots back into the driver’s seat and guns the engine. Just as he tears away, the wrestler manages to jump back onto the hood, furious. TheCommissaire and Roebuck Wright rejoin Maman and Chou-fleur, and the car chase resumes.

On a long straightaway: Gigi suddenly pokes up his head from his car’s canvas sunroof. He finishes unscrambling the bindings around his arms, and his hands are free. The chauffeur attempts to grab at Gigi while still piloting the Citroën. The Commissaire shouts to Roebuck Wright:

The Commissaire climbs out the window of the racing vehicle and crawls onto the hood. Roebuck Wright, horrified, lunges into the driver’s seat. Gigi pops out fully onto the roof of the other car, then leaps from one moving vehicle back toward the other, sailing through the air, arms and legs splayed -- into his father’s arms. They are both knocked back smashing into the windshield (which cracks), then tumble up onto the rooftop and slash down through their own ripping canvas sunroof into the laps of Maman and Chou-fleur.

The chauffeur misjudges the next turn, slides off the street, cracks through a guardrail, flies bashing into a dry riverbed, and explodes into a spectacular fireball. The wrestler tumbles to safety and lands in “neutral position”.

In the back seat: Gigi slaps his father hard across the face. The Commissaire's hat, glasses, cigarette, hairpiece, and eyebrows all fly off his head in different directions. The Commissaire looks astonished, Gigi looks shocked. The

125.125.

Commissairequickly re-attaches his false eyebrows -- then both begin to simultaneously laugh and cry. They kiss and embrace.

(Note: resume live-action.)

A troop of armed police escort a plainclothesman -- carrying the number-cruncher’s yellow suitcase handcuffed to his wrist -- across a street to an armored transport. The plainclothesman trips on the curb, the suitcase snaps open, and the air instantly fills with fluttering documents which confetti into an expanding cloud out over the banks of the river.

The camera booms down below the sidewalk to glimpse an endless underground cache of anonymous file cabinets and forgotten storage boxes. The briefest pause, then the camera booms back up to the cloud of papers.

The camera booms back up to the cloud of papers.

The number-cruncher, still behind bars, eats his breakfast. He looks happy. Seated outside the cell, still connected to a rolling I.V. drip but only slightly the worse for wear, Nescaffier watches and pours himself a glass of the lilac- coloredaperitif (from a thermos, of course).

126.126.

Back on the talk show, Roebuck Wright concludes:

Silence. The host, respectful, turns to camera.

On the daybed: Roebuck Wright reposes, smoking, hands folded across his lap. In the corner: the cheery writer reads a pocket atlas and eats breadsticks. At the desk: Howitzer, feet on the table, flips through out-of-order pages. He grumbles:

127.127.

Roebuck Wright floats to the wastebasket, digs briefly, and withdraws a single, crumpled page. He tosses it, underhand, to Howitzer, who snatches it out of the air and snaps it open in one motion.

Over the street gutter: the shrouded bodies of the dead kidnappers rest in a neat row along the cobblestones. Below a streetlamp: theCommissaire clutches Gigi at his side as he addresses members of the press. Under a white tent: Nescaffier, on a gurney, eyes closed, continues to receive intravenous medication. Roebuck Wright sits next to him on a stool.

Suddenly: Nescaffier speaks:

128.128.

Nescaffier is aware of this. He says, slightly delirious:

Roebuck Wright nods in appreciation. He says quietly:

Nescaffier smiles sadly and shakes his head: no.

Howitzer and Roebuck Wright. Howitzer says, pleased/annoyed:

129.129.

Postscript (pages 130 to 132)

130.130.

On a table: the proofreader. On the couch: the story editor and legal advisor. In the corner: the cheery writer. Also: Berensen, Sazerac, Krementz. The copy boy (lingering near the door, apparently still employed at the magazine) has tears on his face again -- but, it appears: so does everyone else.

The door opens, and Roebuck Wright enters. He stands, frozen, staring across the room. The alumna looks up from her spiral bound notebook.

On the desk: Howitzer’s body, under a tablecloth, surrounded by a multitude of strewn telegrams. A bearded doctor takes off his stethoscope and tucks it into a bag resting on the chest of the corpse.

The doctor takes the bag and exits. The alumna grits her teeth, fighting herself -- then, suddenly: she is sobbing. Berensen grips her arm to comfort her (a bit stern). Krementz points above the door and says simply:

The alumna immediately stops crying. She takes a deep breath. Roebuck Wright folds back the upper edge of the tablecloth, looks down at Howitzer’s face (peaceful) for a moment, then covers him up again. The cheery writer asks grimly:

The legal advisor checks his watch. He explains:

In the next room (seen through a glass partition): the doctor makes arrangements on the telephone. The usual waiter enters carrying an American-style birthday cake. He hesitates. Roebuck Wright asks, hands on Howitzer’s shoulders:

131.131.

The waiter places the cake onto the table and lights a match. Krementz interrupts with a blunt:

Pause. The waiter blows out the match. Sazerac murmurs sadly:

The waiter prepares cake for Sazerac. Roebuck Wright gestures: just a sliver for me. The alumna pulls herself together.

The proofreader scribbles on a chit, snaps her fingers, and passes the chit to the copy boy as she explains:

The copy boy dashes out the door. Hermès Jones, doodling on a paper napkin, announces:

HERMÈS JONES I’m working on the art.

INSERT:

The coffee-stain andconfiture caricature of Howitzer seen at the start of the film, two-thirds finished.

Sazerac studies the picture. He smiles.

Roebuck Wright turns on an electric typewriter (next to the deceased) as he says, including all the assembled reporters:

The writers variously: push back from their tables, fold their hands in their laps, look up toward the ceiling, look off into space, etc. as they begin to mentally outline the story. The waiter asks, puzzled:

132.132.

The waiter nods, finally understanding. The copy boy returns with a folder which he unfolds on the desk. Roebuck Wright types as he dictates:

HERMÈS JONES Is that true?

Mumbling and sad laughter. Roebuck Wright says finally:

The office from the next room (seen through the glass partition). Roebuck Wright resumes typing, and the writers and staff, gathering closer around him, continue to remember and recount.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH

Gallery of images