by Nora Ephron
JOHN COTTER: Yeah. I do. I’m a sick twisted fuck. I’m a heartless prick. I’ll do anything for a good story. I’ve seen too many movies about journalism and I believed them all—(Waving for another drink.) Deadline–U.S.A. Humphrey Bogart. As me. Although considerably nobler. (Quoting Bogart.) “So you want to be a reporter. Well, don’t ever change your mind.”
McALARY: That’s the worst Bogart I ever heard. (Beat.) I’m better when I write for you. I don’t know if I’m any good without you.
JOHN COTTER: You’re my finest creation.
McALARY: You know what I mean.
JOHN COTTER: Nah, Eddie will get you out, we’ll all make out like bandits.
McALARY: Hey. It’s great. Congratulations. Hey.
They clink glasses.
MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) Cotter never wore socks, did anyone tell you that?
BOB DRURY: (To audience.) They told him he had to give up gin, so he switched to vodka.
MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) They told him he had to give up vodka, so he switched to gin.
JERRY NACHMAN: He used to call you up, and if you weren’t home he’d say to your kid, “You know what your daddy told me he’s getting you for Christmas? A pony.”
JOHN COTTER: We’re dinosaurs, you know that? We’re blacksmiths.
McALARY: I love you, man.
JOHN COTTER: Don’t get sloppy.
McALARY stands. COTTER stands. They hug. McALARY exits. COTTER sits back down, smiles happily, sips his drink, in a spotlight all his own.
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) He’d already had one heart attack, and he was wearing the nitrogen patch you’re supposed to wear, and they told him he had to stop drinking, so every five drinks he’d just slap on another patch.
JERRY NACHMAN: (To audience.) Cotter used to say, any story has only one real truth. Go to the morgue and count the bodies.
JOHN COTTER: (To audience.) Count the bodies.
The spotlight on COTTER goes out.
As the guys once again sing an Irish song, McALARY stands motionless, silent.
ENSEMBLE: (Sings.) JERRY NACHMAN:
“Let’s not have a sniffle,
Let’s have a bloody good cry,
And always remember, the longer you live,
The sooner you’ll bloody well die.”
The day after Cotter quit the Post, we took his name off of the masthead. The next day, he died. The day after, we put it back on so his family could qualify for the death payment.
JIM DWYER: What happened next—
BOB DRURY: Everyone knew it would happen.
MICHAEL DALY: We all saw it coming.
JERRY NACHMAN: Inevitable.
JIM DWYER: It was only a matter of time.
New York Post Newsroom
Lights up on McALARY at his desk, working and drinking and working and drinking.
Phones ring throughout.
McALARY: Do-it-do-it-do-it-do-it.
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) One day, the owner of the Post ran out of money and sold the paper, to a snake oil salesman who was running a Ponzi scheme.
McALARY: (Into phone.) Get me the fuck out of here, Eddie, the ship is sinking—
JIM DWYER: It looked like the Post was going under, so Mac decided to go back to the News—
McALARY: (In a bar.) Where’s Dinkins? I’ll tell you where: He’s out practicing his backhand. Giuliani’s going to beat him and it will be Mussolini time. (Into phone.) Eddie, what gives?
EDDIE HAYES: (To audience.) —I’m going to get you three hundred thousand a year—
McALARY: (To EDDIE.) Plus a signing bonus, I want a signing bonus, don’t forget it—
EDDIE HAYES: —plus a fifty-thousand-dollar signing bonus.
McALARY: —Enough for Alice and the kids to move back to a house in Brooklyn and keep the place in Bellport.
EDITORS: McAlary!
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) But Mac wasn’t happy at the News.
EDITORS: McAlary!
JIM DWYER: Jim Willse was gone—
McALARY: (On the phone.) It’s not the same place, Eddie. I’m dying, Eddie, I can’t breathe—
JERRY NACHMAN: —So he decided he wanted to go back to the Post, which Rupert Murdoch had just bought.
In the bar, McALARY plots with DWYER.
McALARY: Here’s the plan, Dwyer. I go to the Post, you come to the News, you’ll get my slot, we’ll make Giuliani’s first term a misery. It’ll be perfect. One-two, one-two.
He signals for another round.
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) That summer he had a spectacular run of stories.
McALARY: Five days in a row.
BOB DRURY: —about a police scandal in Brooklyn.
McALARY: “KNUCKLEHEADS VS ROGUE COPS by Mike McAlary. PBA BOSS A HYPOCRITE by Mike McAlary. GET KELLY COMMISH OUTTA THERE by Mike McAlary.”
JIM DWYER: He got the wood every single day.
EDITOR #1: McAlary!
JERRY NACHMAN: It was like watching Michael Jordan.
McALARY: (Into phone.) Alice, Alice, I love you—
EDITOR #2: McAlary!
McALARY: I’m almost done. (Into phone.) But I am chained to my desk.
EDDIE HAYES: He was driving his price up. It was absolutely methodical.
McALARY: All I want—all I want is to be the highest-paid columnist in New York City.
EDDIE HAYES: It’s feasible. It’s feasible.
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) The Post offered him a million dollars over three years.
EDDIE HAYES: Plus I got you a relocation fee—
BOB DRURY: For what?
McALARY: Moving three cardboard boxes from the News to the Post. (To everyone. Hands in the air.) Put your money away. I’m buying! I am buying!
JIM DWYER: So Mac quit.
JERRY NACHMAN: The News sued McAlary.
BOB DRURY: The Post sued the News.
MICHAEL DALY: There was an injunction.
EDDIE HAYES: Everybody was writing about it. “What was McAlary going to do?”
The phones all stop ringing.
McGuire’s
McALARY is drunk at the bar. He sings.
McALARY: (Sings.) Look at the widow, (Quietly singing during below.)
Bloody great woman.
Isn’t it grand, boys, to be bloody well dead?
Let’s not have a sniffle,
Let’s have a bloody good cry,
And always remember the longer you live
The sooner you’ll bloody well die.
MICHAEL DALY: September 18, 1993. He went to a Yankee game.
HAP HAIRSTON: Fact.
BOB DRURY: He drank beer at the game.
HAP HAIRSTON: Fact.
JIM DWYER: He went to McGuire’s after the game.
BOB DRURY: And drank more beer.
HAP HAIRSTON: More facts.
JERRY NACHMAN: He was out-of-his-mind drunk.
HAP HAIRSTON: Story.
JIM DWYER: He’d been drinking, but he was taking painkillers for a pinched nerve in his neck.
HAP HAIRSTON: Conflicting story.
BOB DRURY: He’d just gotten a million-dollar offer and he was out of control.
HAP HAIRSTON: One way of looking at it.
BOB DRURY: Icarus.
HAP HAIRSTON: Full-of-shit way of looking at it.
JERRY NACHMAN: Inevitable.
McALARY: (Sings.) Look at the tombstone,
McALARY: (Cont’d.) BOB DRURY:
Bloody great boulder
Everyone knew it would happen.
MICHAEL DALY: We all saw it coming.
JERRY NACHMAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
McALARY: JIM DWYER:
Isn’t it grand, boys …
He should never have been driving.
HAP HAIRSTON: We’ll all agree to that.
McALARY leaves the bar. The sound of hard rain falling.
McALARY:
To be bloody well dead?
Let’s not have a sniffle,
Let
’s have a bloody good cry
MICHAEL DALY: It was raining.
JIM DWYER: It was two in the morning.
BOB DRURY: He was traveling south on the FDR.
MICHAEL DALY: Going at least seventy.
BOB DRURY: At least.
JIM DWYER: We don’t really know that.
HAP HAIRSTON: Sure we do.
McALARY: And always remember, the longer you live—
The sound of a car skidding out of control.
A HUGE CRASH.
The sound of the rain.
A phone starts to ring.
McAlary Bedroom in Brooklyn
The light goes on.
ALICE McALARY wakes up alone in bed. She reaches over to McALARY’s side of the bed, answers the phone.
ALICE: Hello?
BLACKOUT
ACT II
Bar/Hospital
A barrage of PROJECTION HEADLINES from multiple newspapers: COLUMNIST CRITICALLY INJURED IN CAR CRASH.
HAP HAIRSTON, JIM DWYER, MICHAEL DALY, JERRY NACHMAN, and EDDIE HAYES are in the bar.
JERRY NACHMAN: So. Not dead.
MICHAEL DALY: But he died—
JERRY NACHMAN: He did not die—
JIM DWYER: They thought he was dead.
MICHAEL DALY: He stopped breathing—
EDDIE HAYES: They gave him last rites—
MICHAEL DALY: —twice—
JERRY NACHMAN: He stopped breathing for a couple of minutes—
EDDIE HAYES: —Seven minutes—
JIM DWYER: At least a minute—
EDDIE HAYES: Nobody knew if he was going to make it—
MICHAEL DALY: Or if he had health insurance. Because he was between jobs. He’d quit the Post for the News—
JERRY NACHMAN: —the News for the Post—
MICHAEL DALY: —who could keep track of any of it?
EDDIE HAYES: And the News was suing him for quitting.
JIM DWYER: They gave him an emergency tracheotomy—
JERRY NACHMAN: There was massive internal bleeding—
MICHAEL DALY: What I remember is being in an elevator in the hospital and somebody said, “Good news, there’s no swelling on the brain.”
JIM DWYER: And I said, “Are they sure it’s really McAlary?”
McALARY appears stage right. He’s in a hospital gown and he has a walker. He’s with ALICE, starting to walk.
She takes the walker away.
McALARY: (His speech is slightly slurred.) I don’t know how to walk.
ALICE: Sure you do.
McALARY: I don’t … I—
ALICE: Michael … Michael—
McALARY: —don’t know what I’m supposed to do with my legs.
ALICE: (Looking him directly in the eye.) You just put one foot in front of the other. C’mon.
He stands stock-still.
Walk—walk, you bastard.
He starts to walk across the stage. Now that McALARY is no longer looking at her, she starts to cry.
That’s it. Keep going.
JIM DWYER: So, not dead.
EDDIE HAYES: But different.
JIM DWYER: And his speech—
MICHAEL DALY: He wasn’t as fast.
EDDIE HAYES: He had trouble with some words. He was a little—
JIM DWYER: Stroke-y.
They all nod.
MICHAEL DALY: But you had to have known him before—
JIM DWYER: It was like a millisecond slower, a hitch—
EDDIE HAYES: If you didn’t know him before, you wouldn’t know.
MICHAEL DALY: But if you knew him before, you knew.
Waiting for him is HAP.
McALARY stands there.
McALARY: Back when I was smart, before I was dead, I could figure this out.
HAP HAIRSTON: You were never smart.
HAP holds out his arm and he and McALARY walk slowly together back across the stage.
I ever tell you about my dog?
McALARY: You got a dog? Poor dog.
As McALARY struggles to walk—
HAP HAIRSTON: Stella. Just went blind. Dealing a hell of a lot better than you or I would. To her, loss of sight is just the next thing in her life she has to confront. That’s where you are, dealing with the next thing you’ve gotta confront. Nothing more.
McALARY: Nah. Feels like I’m being punished, for being an asshole.
HAP HAIRSTON: I can see that.
McALARY: Thanks for coming.
HAP HAIRSTON: By the way, this doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed off at you.
ALICE: He went to Rusk for rehab. After a few months, he was still struggling. I tried to convince him not to, but—
JIM DWYER: He went back to work at the Daily News, where he’d just quit, right before the accident.
Daily News Newsroom
There are big TV sets all over the newsroom.
There’s a NO SMOKING sign. No one is smoking.
JIM DWYER: It’s 1994. Giuliani has just been elected. New York Newsday folded, and a lot of us ended up at the News. Willse was gone and the paper was essentially being run by a charming gentleman named Stanley Joyce. (To audience.) The weekend before McAlary came back to work, he wrote a column from home—(Quoting the column.) “One day you wake up and you are not dead. It’s funny, but the first thing you forget when you are struggling to reclaim your mind are all those mindless feuds that made you so miserably happy.”—
McALARY: —All my enemies went away. Or seemed to. You just wake up one day and the hate slate is clean.
McALARY walks in, sits down at the desk next to JIM DWYER.
JIM DWYER: Good column.
McALARY: Thanks.
McALARY has just the slightest difficulty talking. Very slight.
JIM DWYER: Had to see you now that you were done hating. You made a lot of promises when you were talking to God, but I couldn’t help saying to myself, when he’s feeling better he’s going to say to himself, fuck this.
McALARY smiles. He stands to hug DWYER.
McALARY: Gimme a hug.
JIM DWYER: Don’t give me one of those nelly hugs of yours, McAlary.
McALARY: I love you man.
McALARY laughs, sits back down.
STANLEY JOYCE appears in the newsroom.
JIM DWYER: You heard Stanley is running the joint.
McALARY: The guy hates me.
JIM DWYER: But luckily you don’t hate him anymore. Because you are done hating. (To audience.) McAlary once wrote a column calling him “the most overrated talent in the history of journalism,” so that was kind of a problem.
McALARY: Where’s Hap?
JIM DWYER: In Business. They made him Business editor.
McALARY: What does Hap know about business?
JIM DWYER: The interest rate on overdue credit card payments. What are you writing for tomorrow?
McALARY: I don’t know. Something. There’s always something. Patrick Ewing. He’s a bum.
He starts to type.
JIM DWYER: You can’t do Patrick Ewing.
McALARY: I have a feud with Patrick Ewing. It’s famous.
McALARY goes on typing.
JIM DWYER: You can’t do Patrick Ewing again. Tell me you’re not doing Patrick Ewing.
McALARY goes on typing.
HAP walks into the newsroom.
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) So. Two people who figure into this part of the story—Debby Krenek. She’s an editor. Eventually, she’s going to end up running the place.
HAP points to DEBBY KRENEK, who turns to STANLEY JOYCE, waves her hand meekly to get his attention.
STANLEY JOYCE: What is it, Debby?
HAP HAIRSTON: Stanley Joyce. The managing editor. Who did hate McAlary.
DEBBY KRENEK: McAlary’s column—
STANLEY JOYCE: What about it?
DEBBY KRENEK: It’s about Patrick Ewing? The basketball player?
STANLEY JOYCE: I know who Patrick Ewing is.
DEBBY KRENEK: McAlary’s writ
ten this column before—“Patrick Ewing is a bum.”
STANLEY JOYCE: And?
DEBBY KRENEK: It’s not well-written, and I’m just concerned—
STANLEY JOYCE: This is coming as a big surprise to you? He’s overrated, he’s overpaid, I wish he wasn’t here. What did I leave out?
A beat.
DEBBY KRENEK: O-kay. (To audience.) The editors were all treating him very gingerly. And the reporters … Well, there was a sense he was all for himself, that he didn’t stand for the paper. He stood for whatever was best for him. And all of this came into play with the Jane Doe case.
Bar
HAP HAIRSTON: The Jane Doe case. How the fuck do we tell this part of it?
JIM DWYER: Shit.
EDDIE HAYES: Why don’t we just skip over it?
HAP HAIRSTON: We can’t skip over it.
EDDIE HAYES: Sure we can. No one even remembers—
HAP HAIRSTON: But it happened.
EDDIE HAYES: Fuck. You’re going to need Miller.
MICHAEL DALY: It wasn’t only Miller’s fault.
HAP HAIRSTON: So you tell the story.
MICHAEL DALY: I don’t want to tell the story. I had nothing to do with it. I just want to get my theory in, early.
HAP HAIRSTON: Which is?
MICHAEL DALY: What McAlary never understood is, cops; good cops, bad cops, doesn’t matter. They all piss in your pocket and say it’s raining. He never understood, cops fuck everything up.
HAP HAIRSTON: Noted.
Police Headquarters
The clamor of a press conference at NYPD.
JOHN MILLER appears at the podium. There’s an NYPD shield hanging on the front of the podium.
REPORTER #1: What’s the story on the Jane Doe in Prospect Park?
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) This is where the whole mess starts, at a press briefing at NYPD.
JOHN MILLER: We don’t know. Things don’t quite add up, apparently. So if I were you, I would go easy on it—
REPORTER #1: Meaning what?
JOHN MILLER: Meaning there are problems with the case. But I never said it.
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) John Miller. Deputy commissioner for public information.
REPORTER #2: Can you give us any details?
JOHN MILLER: For your guidance. Not for publication, okay? The Jane Doe says she was walking home from the grocery store when she was dragged up a hill and raped, but the police couldn’t find the bags or the groceries, there were no grass stains on her clothes, no injuries consistent with the struggle she described. Look, all I’m saying is, don’t go to the wood.
