Which Lie Did I Tell? (53 page)

I dump your whole opening.

Acts, I know nothing about. I have three beats.

—Kids have secret life with dad.

—Secret life drives family apart forever.

—Secret life is the only thing that can save them.

Aren’t you glad you asked?

Callie Khouri studied landscape architecture at Purdue, which led naturally to her longtime employment as a music-video producer. She wrote
Thelma and Louise,
her first movie, in longhand. And she may well go down in history as the last Oscar winner (1991) to do so.

Hello Bill,

Here it is. I’m going to do this in a random, haphazard sort of way, so you will get the unfortunate experience of seeing how my mind works, and then you’ll understand why writing is almost impossible for me.

First, I love the setup, the kidnapping, although I don’t know how you demonstrate visually a lot of the things you tell us about Climber. In that sense the script is padded, and the audience will have to just assume a lot of this Bogart persona from the casting, but as intelligent as audiences have proven themselves to be this summer, why should you give a shit? They don’t.

But, I have a big, big problem with Echo. I don’t believe that a woman who willingly runs through a closed window sixty feet up and saves a guy from drowning ends up as this tight-ass bitch married to a guy her husband has already punched out. I don’t believe that she’d want her kids to be the uptight little bastards they pretend to be. I do like that the kids know that the parents want different things from them, but I don’t know how to do it without making me hate this woman. I don’t know enough about her to begin with. You set her up as both beautiful and
brave
and then you screw her on the brave and leave her with just beautiful. Certainly not enough of a reason for me to understand why Climber still loves her. Give her something, for Chrissake! (By the way, anyone who names their son Shirley and doesn’t expect him to be beaten to fine paste every day of their lives is a fucking idiot and I don’t believe for a second that Climber would ever go along with it. And as much as a prig as she is, it is too preposterous for me to believe a woman who would marry a guy like Climber wants to have an effeminate son.) In any case, I just
need more
to understand why and how this marriage, which I’m assuming was born out of an impossibly white-hot chemistry, didn’t last. I don’t know enough about either one of them to really care that they’re not together anymore, and the way it’s set up now,
I know
to the core of my being that they will just as impossibly get back together and I’m asking myself what’s playing in the theater next door.
Why did it fail? What’s the real reason? Perhaps, and this requires giving Echo a little credit, she was just unprepared and ultimately wearied by worrying about him almost dying every time he walks out the front door. He doesn’t even have to work if he doesn’t want to! The father has offered many times to set him up, let him run a big security business if he’s so hell bent on staying in the business, but for gods sake does he have to keep putting his
own life
on the line? What about her? What about the kids? Doesn’t he care enough not to want her to be widowed and the kids to be half-orphaned? Most cops’ wives probably feel that way, only they don’t have the hundreds of millions of dollars that would allow their husbands to quit. Maybe it just got to be too much for her. Why does she hate him so much? Because he wouldn’t give up his stupid cop job for her and his family? And don’t you think that the kids know “That she hates you so much because she loves you, idiot”? They would know that. I will say here that there is nothing sexier to a kid than the idea that their parents will get back together.
Parent Trap
is
still
my favorite movie and those kids are way too on the ball not to realize that their parents still have the hots for each other, Tripp or no Tripp. I am adding a “p” to Trip because it looks more like a name to me that way. As much as I dislike Echo in the version that you have, I don’t dislike her enough to hope she’ll marry this guy.

Maybe Tripp is the guy that her family thought she would marry in the first place until she threw them the curve ball of marrying
way
beneath her (something I think that secretly thrills her father). Maybe he’s not a bad guy, just a tame guy, or maybe he is a bad guy, maybe he’s in on it somehow, I doubt it, but I said I would let my mind wander. I wish there was some way of coming up with somebody doing the second kidnapping that no one would ever, ever expect. I wasn’t totally bowled over by the gardeners because they look so unsuspecting. I also thought that Echo would stop herself when she said that Phoebe was sound asleep, that she would
realize as she was saying it that something was wrong
! That they both would run upstairs, knowing that the kid had been chloroformed or something because
she’s the mother
and she’s never seen the kid asleep. (Just an aside; I was an insomniac as a child and my mother always said that she never actually saw me asleep until I was about twelve.)

Okay, Bill, here it is. I think that somehow, someway, I don’t know how, and I don’t know if it’s possible, but I think that the kids have to have planned their own “Big A.”

They
did it. They’re the only ones with a motive. They can’t have this Tripp guy as their father. They can’t stand being separated from Climber anymore and they know that they are supposed to be together as a Family, all four of them. I would also make sure that it was absolutely genius, foolproof, and that the parents
never ever find out that it was them
and that the
audience does
at the very very end. I don’t know how I would do it, but it would be elegant and elaborate, and both parents would have to be together to solve it, which they never will, but they will realize that they are still passionate about each other. I don’t know how I would do this, but I would spend every waking moment trying to figure that out and then I would hire Scott Frank to write it. That’s all for now.

P.S.: Just in case you think I’ve totally lost my mind, I think it’s important that
if
the kids did plan it, that it reaches a point that it goes crazily out of their control, that there should be
real
danger, and that the little bastards were lucky to get out with their lives. Again, the parents have to
never know
that they had anything to do with it. Oh, and now that we’re on the subject, I can’t stop thinking of this and have lost track of my own script completely.

Scott read me his letter to you and I couldn’t believe what a bunch of sourpusses we are. You said be brutal, but aren’t you a little bit sorry you asked? If I was too harsh, it’s because I’m bitter. That’s the only reason. You know I love you.

More later.

—Callie

For me, John Patrick Shanley is one of the leading playwrights of the decade. No play has rocked me as much as
Beggars in the House of Plenty.
And
Four Dogs and a Bone
is as good a comedy about Hollywood madness as any. If you do not know his theater work, that may well be because Shanley is insanely perverse, not caring about either Broadway or Off-Broadway. He does his stuff for limited runs, then they get printed and spend half their life in productions about the country and the world.

He is equally perverse when he doctors, as you will see, in that he does the brute work
before
any meetings. If his attack is not welcomed, fine; if it is, there won’t be any surprises when he hands in his version of the screenplay.

Oh yeah, he also won an Oscar for his first film,
Moonstruck.

Dear Bill,

Here are my suggestions with regards to your screenplay.

1. I think Climber should save Echo from the kidnappers, only to have her save him in turn. Within the same situation. Our villains could be somewhat more upscale, and be held up at a hotel in Miami let’s say. Climber crashes out the window with Echo, they fall, fall in love, and land in a swimming pool. As it turns out, Climber can’t swim and she has to save him. Including the mouth-to-mouth bit. His reaction upon coming to is Will you marry me?

2. Cut to the Wedding Scene. Her wealth and class is established. The father of the bride says to him, “You must be thinking: How in heaven did I break into this world?” Climber says “I think the question is: How do you break out?” Trip is a wedding guest, well thought of by Echo’s parents. He gets in a conversation with Climber’s dad, Jimmy, and insults him. Climber clocks Trip, setting their mutual rancor in motion.

3. Could the kids be twins? Another reason for them to like
The Parent Trap.
And one trip to the hospital. In any case, Climber and Echo could fight over what to name them. Which is really a fight about which world they belong to. The world of privilege, or the world of rough and tumble. While Climber tries to decide whether to concede the name thing to Echo, she makes a second request: Could Trip be the godfather? The two families have always been close, and a gesture like this would close the rift that opened at the wedding. Climber makes to respond, hesitates, and …

4. Cut to: The Christening. Trip is holding Climber’s babies, and he’s already acting like they’re his. Echo looks at Trip fondly, then at Climber. Climber’s face says it all. The marriage is over.

5. The marriage is over. Climber picks up the kids, on screenplay
this page
[see
this page
, above]. Trip has become Echo’s intimate. The reason for all the subterfuge on the kids’ part is that they are already working what Climber calls: Safe Cases. The current case, a matter of infidelity, goes wrong when the client, that is the husband of the woman with the dark glasses, shows up. And he is Italian and crying and very upset and he has a gun and he misses everybody because he is crying so much but he does fire it several times. The kids are endangered. And Trip has been having Climber followed and this is just the stuff he has been looking for.

6. Climber loses custody. He can fight it in court but it will take years and money he doesn’t have and, meanwhile, he can only see the kids in a supervised setting.

7. He shows up for the first such visit drunk, is busted by the not uncompassionate court-appointed supervisor, and loses the right to see his children
in any way
for 90 days.

8. The kidnapping. Climber shows up. Trip threatens to have him arrested for violating a court order until Echo announces that she asked him to come. He’s good at this kind of case, she observes. Echo, Phoebe, and Climber set off in pursuit.

9. Phoebe describes the kidnapping in detail to the assembled group of Climber and Jimmy’s friends. One guy latches on to Phoebe and asks several questions and then tells Climber: I know these guys. Gives him the info.

10. Cut to: A Japanese gambling parlor set up on the rooftop of a ten-story industrial building. Climber instructs Phoebe just to take a peek, see if she sees the kidnappers, and then they’ll quietly go downstairs and call the police. As soon as Phoebe sees that everyone’s Japanese and about eight guys are missing a finger, she announces that they are the victims of
very
bad information. Climber takes a look and finds a gun pointed at either temple of his head. A polite but firm Yakusa asks the three of them what they are doing there. Climber’s about to answer when Echo jumps in: I’m like a major gambler, I heard about you guys, and I’m here for the action.

They approach a Japanese game of chance. It is incomprehensible. Everything’s in Japanese. There’s a bunch of small stones, bottle caps, and ball bearings. Echo says: “I’d like to bet $10,000 on … something. Can you help me here?” The Croupier (for lack of a better term) offers: “Choose a box.” She chooses a box and loses the ten grand. She looks pleased and exclaims: “What a rush! Okay, let’s go home.” Climber mutters: “I’m hot to trot and I love to lose.” They exit by the door this time and head down ten flights of fire stairs illuminated by only windows glowing with streetlight. Two men attack them and try to kill Climber. A bullet takes Climber down after he has subdued one of the two Attackers. The second Attacker is about to shoot the fallen hero when Echo finds and breaks a wine bottle over his head, Maces him, and pushes him out the window. Climber is alright, a light head wound. They make their way down the last three flights, and look for the fallen man. But there’s no body. Climber complains: “Now who were THEY?”

11. Echo, Climber, and Phoebe go back to her house. She is patching Climber’s head. As she does so, she asks Phoebe to repeat the conversation the kidnappers allowed their son. Is there a clue in there? She figures out the hint. The boy is on the premises. Climber asks about outbuildings and personnel. She mentions that the gardeners are really a world unto themselves. And as she says it, they all reach the same conclusion.

12. They find the boy tied and gagged in the shed with mowers, tractors,
and Gardeners. Climber confronts the Gardeners with a gun. Echo and Phoebe untie the boy. At this moment, the Two Attackers from the previous scene get the drop on Climber. The one Echo pushed out the window is all bandaged up and in a very bad mood. The other one is trying to think in an organized way about what to do with these people. They argue. A roar interrupts them. It’s the kids in a tractor. They hurtle at the Attackers and go right through the wall of the shed. During the confusion, Climber gets a gun and gets a fresh drop on the bad guys.