Which Lie Did I Tell? (24 page)

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Authors: William Goldman

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Film & Video, #Nonfiction, #Performing Arts, #Retail

BOOK: Which Lie Did I Tell?
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Thornhill stares at the man, wondering if this is George Kaplan.
The man looks idly across the highway at Thornhill, his face expressionless.
Thornhill wipes his face with his handkerchief, never taking his eyes off the man across the highway. The FAINT SOUND of an APPROACHING PLANE has gradually come up over the scene. As the SOUND GROWS LOUDER, Thornhill looks up to his left and sees a low-flying biplane approaching from the northwest. He watches it with mounting interest as it heads straight for the
spot where he and the stranger face each other across the highway. Suddenly it is upon them, only a hundred feet above the ground, and then, like a giant bird, as Thornhill turns with the plane’s passage, it flies over them and continues on. Thornhill stares after the plane, his back to the highway. When the plane has gone several hundred yards beyond the highway, it loses altitude, levels off only a few feet above the ground and begins to fly back and forth in straight lines parallel to the highway, letting loose a trail of powdered dust from beneath its fuselage as it goes. Any farmer would recognize the operation as simple crop-dusting.
Thornhill looks across the highway, sees that the stranger is watching the plane with idle interest. Thornhill’s lips set with determination. He crosses over and goes up to the man.
THORNHILL
Hot day.
MAN
Seen worse.
THORNHILL
Are you … uh … by any chance supposed to be meeting someone here?
MAN
(still watching the plane)
Waitin’ for the bus. Due any minute.
THORNHILL
Oh…
MAN
(idly)
Some of them crop-duster pilots get rich, if they live long enough…
THORNHILL
Then your name isn’t … Kaplan.
MAN
(glances at him)
Can’t say it is, ’cause it ain’t.
(he looks off up the highway)
Well--here she comes, right on time.
Thornhill looks off to the east, sees a Greyhound bus approaching. The man peers off at the plane again, and frowns.
MAN
That’s funny.
THORNHILL
What?
MAN
That plane’s dustin’ crops where there ain’t no crops.
Thornhill looks across at the droning plane with growing suspicion as the stranger steps out onto the highway and flags the bus to a stop. Thornhill turns toward the stranger as though to say something to him. But it is too late. The man has boarded the bus, its doors are closing and it is pulling away. Thornhill is alone again.
Almost immediately, he HEARS the PLANE ENGINE BEING GUNNED TO A HIGHER SPEED. He glances off sharply, sees the plane veering off its parallel course and heading towards him. He stand there wide-eyed, rooted to the spot. The plane roars on, a few feet off the ground. There are two men in the twin cockpits, goggled, unrecognizable, menacing. He yells out to them, but his voice is lost in the NOISE of the PLANE.
In a moment it will be upon him and decapitate him. Desperately he drops to the ground and presses himself flat as the plane zooms over him with a great noise, almost combing his hair with a landing wheel.
Thornhill scrambles to his feet, sees the plane banking and turning. He looks about wildly, sees a telephone pole and dashes for it as the plane comes at him again. He ducks behind the pole. The plane heads straight for him, veers to the right at the last moment. We HEAR two sharp CRACKS of GUNFIRE mixed with the SOUND of THE ENGINE, as two bullets slam into the pole just above Thornhill’s head.
Thornhill reacts to this new peril, sees the plane banking for another run at him. A car is speeding along the highway from the west. Thornhill dashes out onto the road, tries to flag the car down but the driver ignores him and races by, leaving him exposed and vulnerable as the plane roars away and another series of SHOTS are HEARD and bullets rake the ground that he has just occupied.
He gets to his feet, looks about, sees a cornfield about fifty yards from the highway, glances up at the plane making its turn, and decides to make a dash for the cover of the tall-growing corn.
SHOOTING DOWN FROM A HELICOPTER about one hundred feet above the ground, we SEE Thornhill running toward the cornfield and the plane in pursuit.
SHOOTING FROM WITHIN THE CORNFIELD, we SEE Thornhill come crashing in, scuttling to the right and lying flat and motionless as we HEAR THE PLANE ZOOM OVER HIM WITH A BURST OF GUNFIRE and bullets rip into the corn, but at a safe distance from Thornhill. He raises his head cautiously, gasping for breath, as he HEARS THE PLANE MOVE OFF AND INTO ITS TURN.
SHOOTING DOWN FROM THE HELICOPTER, we SEE the plane leveling off and starting a run over the cornfield, which betrays no sign of the hidden Thornhill. Skimming over the top of the cornstalks, the plane gives forth no burst of gunfire now. Instead, it lets loose thick clouds of poisonous dust which settle down into the corn.
WITHIN THE CORNFIELD, Thornhill, still lying flat, begins to gasp and choke as the poisonous dust envelops him. Tears stream from his eyes but he does not dare move as he HEARS THE PLANE COMING OVER THE FIELD AGAIN. When the plane zooms by and another cloud of dust hits him, he jumps to his feet and crashes out into the open, half blinded and gasping for breath. Far off down the highway to the right, he SEES a huge Diesel gasoline-tanker approaching.
SHOOTING FROM THE HELICOPTER, we SEE Thornhill dashing for the highway, the plane leveling off for another run at him, and the Diesel tanker speeding closer.
SHOOTING ACROSS THE HIGHWAY, we SEE Thornhill running and stumbling TOWARDS CAMERA, the plane closing in behind him, and the Diesel tanker approaching from the left. He dashes out into the middle of the highway and waves his arms wildly.
The Diesel tanker THUNDERS down the highway towards Thornhill, KLAXON BLASTING impatiently.
The plane speeds relentlessly toward Thornhill from the field bordering the highway.
Thornhill stands alone and helpless in the middle of the highway, waving his arms. The plane draws closer. The tanker is almost upon him. It isn’t going to stop. He can HEAR THE KLAXON BLASTING him out of the way. There is nothing he can do. The plane has caught up with him. The tanker won’t stop. It’s
got
to stop.
He hurls himself to the pavement directly in its path. There is a SCREAM OF BRAKES and SKIDDING TIRES, THE ROAR OF THE PLANE ENGINE and then a tremendous BOOM as the Diesel truck grinds to a stop inches from Thornhill’s body just as the plane, hopelessly committed and caught unprepared by the sudden stop, slams into the traveling gasoline tanker and plane and gasoline explode into a great sheet of flame.
In the next few moments, all is confusion. Thornhill, unhurt, rolls out from under the wheels of the Diesel truck. The drivers clamber out of the front seat and drop to the highway. Black clouds of smoke billow up from the funeral pyre of the plane and its cremated occupants.
We recognize the flaming body of one of the men in the plane. It is Licht, one of Thornhill’s original abductors
. An elderly open pickup truck with a secondhand refrigerator standing in it, which has been approaching from the east, pulls up at the side of the road. Its driver, a farmer, jumps out and hurries toward the wreckage.
FARMER
What happened?
The Diesel truck drivers are too dazed to answer. Flames and smoke drive them all back. Thornhill, unnoticed, heads toward the unoccupied pickup truck. Another car comes up from the west, stops, and its driver runs toward the other men. They stare, transfixed at the holocaust. Suddenly, from behind them, they HEAR the PICKUP TRUCK’S MOTOR STARTING. The farmer who owns the truck turns, and is startled to see his truck being driven away by an utter stranger.
FARMER
Hey!
He runs after the truck. But the stranger--who is Thornhill--steps harder on the accelerator and speeds off in the direction of Chicago.

I suppose, along with the shower scene from
Psycho,
this is the most famous sequence Hitchcock ever shot. When you see the movie, it all seems so seamless it feels like the creation of it must have been pretty much the same way.

But no.

Lehman
and Hitchcock knew each other a little, wanted to work together. MGM had just bought their first property for Hitchcock, a
Hammond Innes best-seller,
The Wreck of the Mary Deare.
Briefly, the plot concerned a ship floating in the English Channel with nobody aboard, followed by a huge naval inquiry.

For weeks, Lehman would drive to Hitchcock’s house on Bellagio Road in L.A. and they would spend the day talking. Which was when Lehman noticed that every time he brought the conversation around to
The Wreck of the Mary Deare,
Hitchcock would look anxious and change the subject.

Soon it was obvious neither of them wanted to do it, but they liked the time they spent together, so, without telling MGM, they decided to find something else they wanted to do together. Hitchcock had a lot of stuff he wanted to shoot, and he would spitball them to Lehman.

One of them was the longest dolly shot in history, without any cuts, which would take place at a Detroit auto factory and you would start at the beginning of the assembly line and slowly watch the car being put together and when the car is completed and ready to be driven off the assembly line there is a dead body inside.

Lehman in those days was very tough and famous for leaving projects as soon as he could. He was constantly
quitting (he quit
North by Northwest
twice), only to be brought back soon after.

The car shot does me no good, he said.

Another Hitchcock moment: we are in Banff, Lake Louise, a religious group having its annual spiritual retreat—and a twelve-year-old girl takes a gun out of her baby carriage and shoots someone.

Does me no good, Lehman said.

Okay—this: in Alaska, two men who
hate
each other, sworn enemies, walk toward each other across a frozen lake where a hole has been cut. They walk slowly, closer and closer, and when they get close, they fall into each other’s arms and hug.

Wonderful bits, sure, but no more than that.

One day Hitchcock says, “I’ve always wanted to do a chase across the face of Mount Rushmore.”

That was the start of everything.

Hitchcock had also always wanted to do a sequence at the United Nations where somebody’s addressing the General Assembly and he stops and says, “I will not continue until the delegate from Peru wakes up.” The page taps the delegate from Peru on the shoulder—and he’s dead.

By now, Hitchcock has to leave to shoot
Vertigo
—for me, the most overrated movie of all time—but Lehman is aware that whatever the story is, it’s moving in a northerly direction.

As well as being famously pessimistic, Lehman is also not the fastest writer around. He constantly criticizes himself, ditches stuff, but eventually sixty pages are shipped off to Hitchcock, who sends Lehman a rave four-page handwritten letter of approval, and they meet again.

With both Cary Grant
and
Jimmy Stewart anxious to come aboard.

(Can you imagine what that must have been like—two of the very greatest stars
ever
panting to join the team. Personally, I cannot. I don’t believe we have stars like that anymore. Probably we know too much about them now. Anyway, I haven’t spotted a lot of them in the movies I’ve seen lately.)

Lehman is writing this with no knowledge of what comes next but he’s got Cary Grant on the train where he meets
Eva Marie Saint. He and Hitchcock are spitballing again.

Hitchcock muses: Do you know what I’ve always wanted to shoot?

What?

I always wanted to shoot a scene where a man is alone. Totally alone. No matter where you shoot, all 360 degrees, nothing.

Lehman listens.

And then the villains try and kill him.

How? asks Lehman.

With a
tornado,
Hitchcock says then.

And Lehman is dying, he’s got half a sensational script, and he says, Hitch, how do they get a
tornado
to kill him at that moment?

Hitchcock grumbles, goes silent.

Lehman too.

More silence.

They were used to it. They would sit through these incredibly long silences, staring at the walls.

Then Lehman says these words:
maybe a plane. A crop-duster plane.

And suddenly they were both jabbering away, and then they were both acting out the scene, and then Lehman went home and wrote the scene faster than he ever wrote anything before.

Remember that—Lehman wrote it. It is an Ernie Lehman scene, filmed
exactly
as he wrote it. Hitchcock shot it—and not that well. Look at the shot when the plane hits the truck. Awful.

Lehman gets insufficient credit for it now and, I suspect, will get less in the future. It
feels
like such a great Hitchcock scene. And it is. And that is a great tribute to Lehman.

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