Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade

by William Goldman

  CUT TO

  THE CLIMBER, picking her up now, lifting her out of bed.

  CLIMBER

  Never gonna happen.

  CUT TO

  THE WINDOW as he carries her there in his arms. She won't look out.

  CLIMBER

  Tell me what was so horrible.

  (PHOEBE shakes her head)

  It'll be our secret.

  PHOEBE

  (long pause--finally)

  Shirley looked up at my window--I know he hoped I was there like I always am-- and I could tell what he was saying with his eyes. Help me. Help me.

  (beat)

  And I ran back to bed and hid under the covers.

  CLIMBER

  Okay. Tell me what was so horrible.

  PHOEBE

  I just did--I cannot believe you weren't paying attention--

  CLIMBER

  --you mean you should have rushed outside and beaten everybody up and rescued your brother?

  (before she can reply, his voice changes--very soft)

  Rescue him now, Phoebes.

  PHOEBE

  I don't know what you mean.

  CLIMBER

  Rescue him now, look out there.

  CUT TO

  PHOEBE. She stares out the window.

  CUT TO

  WHAT SHE SEES OUTSIDE THE WINDOW. Woods, trees, moonlight, shadows.

  CUT TO

  ECHO, entering the bedroom now, starting to speak--

  --but CLIMBER gestures for her to shut up.

  She shuts up, moves a little closer.

  CUT TO

  CLIMBER AND PHOEBE. The same whispering tone again.

  CLIMBER

  What did you see, Phoebes? Tell me about them.

  PHOEBE looks out the window again.

  CUT TO

  WHAT SHE SEES. Same as before. Woods trees, moonlight, shadows.

  CUT TO

  CLIMBER AND PHOEBE. She shakes her head.

  CLIMBER

  The Big A is starting, kiddo--last chance to get a ticket--

  CUT TO

  PHOEBE, looking out the window again.

  WHAT SHE SEES. Same as before--

  --only it isn't--it's the kidnapping shot--

  --the shadows are different and there's a breeze now and HERE COME TWO MEN, hurrying into view--

  --PHOEBE is back seeing what she saw--

  --they are only there for a blink--

  --but they carry SHIRLEY between them--

  PHOEBE (OVER)

  Two men--

  CLIMBER (OVER)

  --same size?--

  CUT TO

  THE ROOM, CLIMBER AND PHOEBE, ECHO nearby.

  CLIMBER

  (as PHOEBE shakes her head)

  --start with the bigger one--

  PHOEBE

  --hat--limped--

  CLIMBER

  --right or left?

  CUT TO

  THE KIDNAPPING SHOT-- and it didn't register to us before, but the bigger man does limp.

  PHOEBE (OVER)

  Left.

  CLIMBER (OVER)

  Go on about the hat.

  PHOEBE (OVER)

  Too big.

  We see it now--it is too big.

  CUT TO

  THE ROOM. CLIMBER AND PHOEBE. And ECHO behind them, eyes wide in wonder.

  Now PHOEBE is squinting out the window. Staring so hard--

  CUT TO

  THE KIDNAPPING SHOT

  PHOEBE (OVER)

  Bald! He was bald, Daddy, he was trying to hide he was bald.

  She's right.

  CUT TO

  THE ROOM. CLIMBER AND PHOEBE, calm. ECHO's going nuts--who is this child?

  PHOEBE

  Am I helping?

  CLIMBER

  Jury's still out, but I think probably.

  PHOEBE

  (jumping out of his arms)

  Wow, I better get ready.

  (heading for her closet)

  What do you wear on the Big A?

  CLIMBER

  Sneaks and jeans. Could be outside work, bring a sweater--okay, the smaller one--

  PHOEBE

  (from the closet)

  Missing most of a little finger. He was holding Shirl funny.

  CUT TO

  THE KIDNAPPING SHOT. The SMALLER MAN is definitely missing most of a finger as he carries SHIRLEY along.

  CUT TO

  THE BEDROOM. ECHO moves to CLIMBER as PHOEBE is heard thrashing around in her closet.

  CLIMBER

  Anything else?

  PHOEBE

  (poking her head out)

  Lots, but that isn't as easy as it looks, Daddy, and I'm a little pooped.

  ECHO

  You think you're taking her?

  CLIMBER

  (are you serious?)

  She's our chance.

  ECHO

  (hard for her)

  I can't let you go alone.

  CLIMBER. CLOSE UP.

  CLIMBER

  (takes her shoulders, hard)

  Listen now--I have loved you since our first moment, always did, always will--

  (dangerous now)

  --but stay the hell out of our way.

  (and on that)

  It's two o'clock and the telephone rings--

  Question for you: What is the most solid element in the scene you just read? Another way of putting it: What was the most proper screenwriting? I'll go on while you make up your mind.

  Since I left us with the phone ringing, I think the next scene should be the phone call. And the sad truth is, it's kind of a drag. Not much you can do with it but make it short because we have all seen a million scenes like it. The cops standing around tensely, the computer nerd with all the equipment tracking the location of the phone call and you know he's not going to get it because if he does get it, where's the movie? The scary, distorted voice of the villain, the trying-to-be-brave-but-underneath-scared-shitless voice of the victim.

  Trying for a little difference, I want the terrified Shirley to ask only to talk to his sister, and Phoebes gets on, tells him of the Big A, and that they'll all be together in no time, and Shirley manages to say how he hopes that's true, the family being together again, how he wishes that it happen "so soon you won't believe it" and then the villain clicks off the phone, the call is over.

  The cops surround the technicians who have been tracing the call, but--shock and gasp--no good, not long enough, and on their way to the car, Phoebe looks around to say goodbye to her mother but can't find her--

  --outside they go--

  --to find Echo already sitting there, ready to roll.

  So the three of them take off. On the Big A. To try and find, this night, somehow, somewhere on the earth, the boy who wants to be called Flash.

  I suppose it will not come as a huge surprise when I tell you if Act I was called Things Going Good, and Act II was called Things Going Bad, then this, Act III, I'm calling The Big A.

  You know what it has to accomplish.

  What kind of a shot do you think we have?

  There is no right answer, understand--just figure our chances.

  And while you are figuring, I have but two words for you: Phoebe's insomnia. (I'm back now answering my question about the most proper element in the memory scene.)

  For me, that is what I consider professional work.

  I set it up twice. Once, when the kids are trying to get the approval of their grandfather, this exchange happens:

  CLIMBER

  She's got genius inside her, Pop.

  JIMMY

  Besides the memory, what else?

  I never went on with that thought, never explained. I just wanted to plant that there was something very unusual about Phoebe's memory.

  A few pages later, Climber has put Shirley to sleep, kisses Phoebes, and with a troubled look, goes to his bed, watches my beloved Sprewell, and we

  CUT TO

  THE APARTMENT. Middle of the night. CLIM
BER jerks awake, rubs his eyes, gets out of bed.

  CUT TO

  THE OTHER BEDROOM. As before. SHIRLEY is dead to the world. PHOEBE reads. Now she looks up as her father comes in. He sits on the bed and they whisper.

  CLIMBER

  Phoebes, you've gotta sleep sometime.

  (he puts the book down, turns out her light)

  It's the one thing we worry about most.

  You were supposed to think that was just what it was: a worried father with a child who cannot sleep. But it was more than that.

  When we screenwrite, things should hook into one another. One thought moving forward while often, at the same time, if needed, referring back. I knew Phoebe had this miracle memory. But I wanted to surprise and please you when you saw it in action.

  I also thought she might have seen the kidnapping. (If you will look back--and remember this is a For Our Eyes Only first draft--it is not totally clear what she sees from her room. At one point I remember she and Shirley were looking out front, waiting for their father to arrive.)

  I had no idea I would need her memory to make the scene play. But it was another fastball I felt I had, to be used if necessary.

  By the time Act III started, I felt it was necessary.

  I wrote an exchange you probably paid no attention to--you're right, you shouldn't have. Climber comes into the mansion, Echo is there to meet him. The dialogue goes like this--

  CLIMBER

  --when?--

  ECHO

  --around eleven--

  CLIMBER

  (sharply)

  --do better!

  ECHO

  I went in to check Phoebe--the news was just starting--she was sound asleep--

  Echo goes on a while about the time, but that's just filler--once Climber hears Phoebe was asleep, he knows everything.

  He knows she is hiding something because he knows this: she never sleeps. My God, at his house she was up in the middle of the night, here it's eleven, what could she be hiding?

  She must have seen the kidnapping. Has to be that. And what he has to do is give her the confidence to tell what she actually did see. He knows of her memory, he knows the case is in her head.

  When I can write a scene like the memory scene, it may be dreadful--as I write this explanation, no one else but me has read it--but as the one doing the writing, if I can have a hook, a connective, it gives me great confidence. Once I decided I was going to use Phoebe, I felt, shit, I can make this play, because if art should be both inevitable and surprising, that scene--forget the word "art"--that scene has both. A great detective inevitably burrowing his way into a difficult case. And help coming from a surprising source, a genius child.

  There is a magician's expression I like--I've already mentioned it--and it is this: the work is done. Again the explanation: magic tricks fall into three parts. The illusion of the trick--how it looks to us, the audience. The preparation of the trick--that's all the stuff the magician has to get ready before he begins, pinning things inside his magic suit, crimping cards, everything he needs to create the spell.

  Now if the preparation has been done properly, magicians feel that sometimes--it could be halfway through, it could be even before they start--the work is done.

  It is inexorable. You keep going forward and nothing can stop you.

  Sometimes, I feel that way about screenplays.

  In Butch, for example, there is a preparation moment early. Butch and Sundance have decided to go to South America. Sundance tells Etta Place (Katherine Ross) that she can come along if she doesn't whine. She agrees to go. But then she adds this:

  ETTA

  So I'll go with you, and I won't whine, and I'll sew your socks and stitch you when you're wounded, and anything you ask of me I'll do, except one thing: I won't watch you die. I'll miss that scene if you don't mind.

  For me, that speech was there for but one reason: when she says she won't watch them die. It hits a chord, is gone.

  Maybe half an hour later, after they have killed for the first time getting the payroll money back, and they are at the bottom, she suggests they find other ways of going straight. They don't know how. They lie by the campfire in silence. And this dialogue happens.

  ETTA

  (wide awake)

  Hey?

  SUNDANCE

  (wide awake too)

  Hmm?

  ETTA

  Maybe I might go back ahead of you.

  SUNDANCE

  You mean home?

  ETTA

  I was thinking of it.

  SUNDANCE

  (he doesn't want her to go)

  Whatever you want, Etta.

  ETTA

  Then maybe I'll go.

  SUNDANCE

  (to BUTCH)

  Hey?

  BUTCH

  (he is also wide awake)

  Hmm?

  SUNDANCE

  Etta's thinking of maybe going home ahead of us.

  BUTCH

  (he doesn't want her to go either)

  Whatever she wants.

  ETTA

  I'll go then.

  The scene goes on a while longer and the movie goes on for twenty-plus more pages--

  --but I think the whole work was done. I am talking in terms of story. I meant for us to care for the two guys as much I did. By now the audience should know they are goners. And a sense of sadness should have begun to pervade the story.

  Now, it sure helps that the shootout is the greatest action scene I've ever been around. Hill just did it so brilliantly. But I think the screenplay would have been proper with a scene of far lesser impact.

  And maybe I'm nuts--we'll see; my doctors are about to descend and tell me--but I think the work is done here, too.

  If I have structured a proper screenplay.

  No question, if I could come up with dazzling stuff, it's that much better than ordinary stuff.

  Here's what I want to happen: everybody lives and Echo and Climber get back together. And, sure, they'll probably screw up again, but maybe not, they're wiser and sadder than the first time.

  Here's a couple of things I have vaguely in mind:

  I think I want a scene with Jimmy in a bar, middle of the might, with the most incredible group of other guys who try and help--ancient retired cops, old tough detectives, retired Mafia guys.

  Aside: In what you have read, Jimmy isn't much. I didn't know if I needed him when I started, still am not sure. But I liked the idea of the kids' grandfather being Cagney, one of my heroes. And I liked the possibility of--and I didn't write this at all, it ain't in what you read--the possibility of Climber, when he's around his dad, regressing a little bit, be more like a kid around his father, seeking, as we all do, approval. End of aside.

  Anyway, in this bar with Jimmy is all the crime wisdom of the past half century. Climber calls and asks, "Anything yet?" And Jimmy maybe says, "Believe it, two guys who tried a kidnapping in the Bronx a year ago. One of them's missing a finger and the other one's losing his hair."

  And Climber, on a note of triumph, roars to the address Jimmy gives him, bursts in and throws the two guys against the wall--

  --only they're the wrong guys.

  (At one point in my insomnia last night I wondered if they could be Chinese. Probably not--we are dealing with a life in danger; laughter does not help our cause.)

  I think I want a scene where the three of them have to wait somewhere. It's tense and they're liable to be there a long time and Echo and Climber haven't really talked much yet--

  --and Phoebe looks at them, says, "I wonder, how did you two meet?"

  Neither answers--they don't really want to go there.

  But she's relentless, because they never want to tell her, they're tired of telling the story, but it's her very favorite story in the world. "I've always wondered why you never told me."

  Still, no reply.

  "Probably you put ads in magazines. 'Detective wants to meet'--what were you, Mommy?"

  "I
was a college sophomore."

  " 'Detective--wants to meet college sophomore.' Why did you put the ad in, Daddy?"

  "It was a case, Phoebe. Now and forever. It was a case."

  But she's gotten them talking and that's a first and I think it's the start of their reuniting. We know he's in love with her and we think she might still be in love with him, so that journey shouldn't be all that hard to make play.

  (Aside: Another thing I didn't put in is that the kids' favorite movie of all time is The Parent Trap, a Disney hit from the '60s where Hayley Mills tries to get her divorced parents back together. I think Shirley brings it up a lot. I think he's got a tape of it at his father's apartment and he and Phoebe play it all the time, driving Climber nuts. End of aside.)

  I think the gardeners of the estate are behind the kidnapping--the guys we've seen who never wave at the car. I think the gardeners hired the guys who did the job.

  I don't know why I think that. Probably because we've met them in passing, and if I do decide they are the baddies, I should give them a little more screen time, not much, though. I want the surprise.

  What's appealing about them is that they're handy. Look, this was never meant to be a great exercise in deduction. It's a romantic comedy about an unusual family. If I don't use the gardeners, I have to spend more time setting up somebody else. And if I have someone who's around but not around much, it might be obvious he did it.

  Besides, I've met some pretty weird gardeners.

  I kind of think this: that Shirley hasn't been taken anywhere. Maybe he's bound and gagged and tossed in the corner of the gardener's cottage.

  If I go that way, I've already set up a way for our adventurers to figure that out. When Phoebe is talking to Shirley over the phone back in the house, he says he hopes that the family will be together again, and I quote, "so soon you won't believe it."

  Well, that's an odd manner of speech. And one of them could realize that just as the money is being transferred or some other time of high tension. Someone could realize, he's there. And off they go to the final rescue.

  I think that realization comes not from Phoebe, whom we expect to come up with it, or Climber either. I want Echo to have her moment. Because if it works, it shows that she belongs with them in their craziness.

  Now the bad part of this is that at one time I thought I was repeating the opening rescue, the same only different. I wanted Climber wounded enough so he can't, so maybe Echo has to do it.

  But I have never seen a multistoried gardener's cottage.

  I believe that I have an ending. At least a start. It would come after the climactic scene when all hell has to break loose, when the rescue happens, when Climber is wounded, when Shirley becomes Flash. Here's how I think I'd do it.

  CUT TO

  CLIMBER'S CAR, making its now familiar path through the estate up to the front door.

  Weeks have passed. The changing of the leaves.

  CUT TO

  INSIDE THE HOUSE AND TRIP'S VOICE.

  TRIP (OVER)

  Children--your father's here.

  CUT TO

  THE KIDS. Dressed like kids now. Lord Fauntleroy banished.